After departing OpenAI roughly one month ago, Ilya Sutskever has teamed up to create a new venture called Safe Superintelligence Inc, which is positioning itself as a company dedicated to AI safety.
Formerly the chief scientist and co-founder of OpenAI, Sutskever has now launched a startup with a strong focus on safety in AI.
This decision comes shortly after Sutskever’s departure from OpenAI, where he had been a key player for almost a decade. Sutskever, along with Jan Leike, who also left the company, had been leading OpenAI’s superalignment team, focusing on ensuring the safety of future AI systems.
While Sutskever did not disclose the specific reasons for his exit, Leike mentioned in a later statement that the emphasis on AI safety at OpenAI had been overshadowed by a focus on flashy products.
Safe Superintelligence Inc (SSI), the new company co-founded by Sutskever along with former Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross and former OpenAI engineer Daniel Levy, is positioning itself as a company singularly focused on safety as its main goal. The team, investors, and business model at SSI are all aligned around achieving this goal.
SSI outlined its approach to safety and capabilities as co-existing technical challenges that require groundbreaking engineering and scientific advances. The company aims to advance capabilities rapidly while ensuring that safety remains at the forefront, allowing for scalability.
The startup is actively hiring to build a dedicated team focused solely on advancing SSI’s goals.
Sutskever emphasized the company’s commitment to pursuing safe superintelligence through innovative breakthroughs led by a focused and agile team.
In response to the departures of Sutskever and Leike, OpenAI decided to integrate the superalignment team’s efforts into its overall research. The company also expressed confidence in its ability to lay the groundwork for safe AI deployment in the future.
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