On Wednesday, OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever announced his new AI venture, Safe Superintelligence Inc. or SSI just a month after resigning from ChatGPT-parent.
What Happened: Sutskever, who OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described as the “guiding light of our field” founded the new AI company with ex-Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross, who also led AI efforts at Apple Inc. and former OpenAI engineer Daniel Levy.
The former OpenAI chief scientist announced the move onX, formerly Twitter, saying, “We will pursue safe superintelligence in a straight shot, with one focus, one goal, and one product. We will do it through revolutionary breakthroughs produced by a small cracked team.”
Sutskever played a crucial role in enhancing AI safety at OpenAI amidst the rise of “superintelligent” AI systems. However, disagreements over AI safety strategies with OpenAI’s leadership led to Sutskever and Jan Leike, who co-led OpenAI's Superalignment team, led to the duo leaving the company in May. Leike now leads a team at Anthropic, a rival AI firm.
He provided more details about the new company in an interview with Bloomberg but declined to comment on its funding situation or valuation. “This company is special in that its first product will be the safe superintelligence, and it will not do anything else up until then,” he said while speaking with Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance.
“By safe, we mean safe like nuclear safety as opposed to safe as in ‘trust and safety,'” he said, adding, “You're talking about a giant super data center that's autonomously developing technology. That's crazy, right? It's the safety of that that we want to contribute to.”
During the same interview, Gross stated, “Out of all the problems we face, raising capital is not going to be one of them.”
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Why It Matters: Before his departure, Sutskever had been missing in action since his ill-fated “palace coup” in November 2023, leading to speculation about his whereabouts.
In November last year, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who is also one of the co-founders of OpenAI commented on the ouster of Altman as OpenAI CEO and Sutskever’s involvement in the development. The tech mogul at the time said, “Ilya has a good moral compass and does not seek power,” adding, “He would not take such drastic action unless he felt it was absolutely necessary.”
Musk, who invested $50 million in OpenAI during its early days, left the company in 2018. He has previously voiced concerns about OpenAI shifting towards a profit-driven model, rather than adhering to its original vision of being a non-profit, open-source entity.
Previously, Helen Toner, a former OpenAI board member, revealed that the board was not informed about the launch of the company’s chatbot, ChatGPT. They learned about the launch through social media.
She also said, “For years Sam had made it really difficult for the board to actually do the job by withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening at the company, in some cases outright lying to the board.”
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