Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and former chief scientist of OpenAI, launches Safe Surperintelligence Inc (SSI). Its objective is to return to the original mission of the creator of ChatGPT, namely to produce powerful and reliable artificial intelligence.
After nine years at OpenAI, is Ilya Sutskever preparing to become the main competitor of the creator of ChatGPT?
Until May 2024, Ilya Sutskever was the chief scientist of OpenAI. Having left against a background of disagreement with management (he had notably participated in the coup against Sam Altman, before indicating that he regretted it), Ilya Sutskever seems to think that the commercial trajectory taken by his former team is not the right one. He resigned to lead a ” personnal project ” which has just been revealed.
Superintelligence, a more modest project to master AI
“Superintelligence is within reach. Building secure superintelligence (SSI) is the most important technical challenge of our time”, we can read on the website of the startup, based in Palo Alto (California) and Tel Aviv (Israel). The existence of the company was made official on June 19.
What Ilya Sutskever seems to be calling “superintelligence” is probably artificial general intelligence, or AGI, as the rest of the industry calls it. The startup says its sole mission is to build superintelligence, which appears to distance it from business goals similar to those of ChatGPT or Dall-E.
“Our single-minded focus means there are no distractions from management fees or product cycles, and our business model means safety, security and progress are all immune to pressures short-term business »also adds Ilya Sutskever, in what looks in every way like a tackle aimed at OpenAI.
Did Sam Altman’s former chief scientist feel like he could no longer work on his main mission because of the development of products designed to amaze the world? Rumors have mentioned the existence of two schools of thought for several months, the birth of Superintelligence seems to confirm Ilya Sutskever’s major disagreement with Sam Altman. In the coming months, OpenAI could also become a for-profit company.
What will be SSI’s first product? Given the mission claimed by the company, everything suggests that Superintelligence will rarely communicate. Ilya Sutskever wants to move from light to shadow, in the hope of designing the most efficient AI on the market. Will he be able to bring in part of the OpenAI team? This is the most important issue for Sam Altman’s former ally.
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