The former chief scientist and co-founder of OpenAI has announced that he is starting his own artificial intelligence (AI) company with a focus on safety.
Ilya Sutskever said the company is launching Safe Superintelligence, adding that building safe AI is “our mission, our name, and our entire product roadmap.”
In a statement on the new company's website, the company said it would approach “safety and capability together” as engineering problems to be solved, “advancing capability as quickly as possible while always keeping safety first.”
Starting a new company: https://t.co/BG3K3SI3A1
— Ilya Sutskeva (@ilyasut) June 19, 2024
Some critics have expressed concern that big tech and AI companies are too focused on reaping the commercial benefits of emerging technologies, ignoring safety principles in the process — an issue raised in recent months when several former OpenAI staffers announced they were leaving the company.
OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk has also accused the company of abandoning its original mission of developing open source AI to focus on commercial interests.
Seemingly responding directly to these concerns, Safe Superintelligence's launch statement said: “Our single focus means we aren't distracted by administrative costs or product cycles, and our business model ensures that safety, security and progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures.”
Sutskever was involved in a high-profile attempt last year to remove Sam Altman as OpenAI's CEO, after which Altman was quickly reinstated, and was subsequently removed from the company's board of directors before leaving the company in May of this year.
Safe Superintelligence also includes former OpenAI researcher Daniel Levy and former Apple AI leader Daniel Gross, who are co-founders of the new company, which will have offices in California and Tel Aviv, Israel.
The three said the company is “the world's first straight-shot SSI (Secure Superintelligence) Laboratory with one goal and one product: secure superintelligence,” which they called “the most important technological problem of our time.”
