software
OpenAI co-founder: Superintelligence without risk is the goal
Will soon become reality: Safe Superintelligence (symbolic image). Photo
© Peter Steffen/dpa
Ilya Sutskever is considered one of the leading experts in artificial intelligence and was the inspiration for ChatGPT. With his new start-up, he promises super-smart AI that is harmless to humans.
One of the founders of ChatGPT inventor OpenAI is setting up its own AI start-up. The goal of the new company, called Safe Superintelligence, is to create safe, highly developed artificial intelligence, announced Ilya Sutskever.
“What’s special about the company is that its first product will be secure superintelligence – and it won’t bring out anything else before that,” Sutskever told financial service Bloomberg. This will allow the company to avoid commercial pressure and a race with other AI labs, the researcher argued.
Sutskever is considered one of the leading minds in the development of artificial intelligence. He has two co-founders at Safe Superintelligence: Daniel Gross once worked on artificial intelligence at Apple, and Daniel Levy once worked with Sutskever at OpenAI.
The question of whether AI systems could become dangerous for humanity once they become more powerful and independent has been a concern for the industry for years. There are repeated warnings from experts and attempts by governments to minimize risks through strict regulations and reporting requirements.
Sutskever was head of research at OpenAI. Last year he was involved in the surprise firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, which was reversed just days later after pressure from employees and major investor Microsoft. Sutskever remained in the background after that and left the ChatGPT developer in May.
The vision for the new company is something like a return to OpenAI’s roots as a non-profit research lab. However, a few years after its founding, OpenAI came to the conclusion that it would not be able to stay afloat without a commercial product. This led to a multi-billion dollar pact with software giant Microsoft and the release of ChatGPT. How Sutskever’s new superintelligence lab will be financed remains unclear.