Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the new startup from OpenAI founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised $1 billion to develop safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems, company executives told Reuters.
In June, Sutskever said that SSI would have offices in the United States and Israel, but has not provided further details on the matter in the past three months. AGI, or superintelligence as Sutskever calls it, is an AI system that learns on its own and develops human and superhuman capabilities.
According to the Reuters report, SSI has 10 employees and with the new funding, the company will purchase powerful computers and hire a small team of trusted researchers and engineers spread between Palo Alto and Tel Aviv. The report adds that the company has a valuation of $5 billion, even before developing a product or launching a beta version.
According to Reuters, SSI investors include venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global and SV Angel, while NFDG, an investment partnership led by Nat Friedman and SSI’s Israeli CEO Daniel Gross, also participated.
Sutskever left OpenAI — which developed ChatGPT — earlier this year due to a dispute with the company’s management and board over the future direction of AI. He is considered a conservative on the future role of AI and the risks it poses to humanity. The dispute between Sam Altman and Sutskever is believed to have revolved around Altman’s desire to steer the company in a commercial direction, which ignores the limitations of the technology. Sutskever initially ousted Altman last November, but Altman quickly returned to the company under pressure from investors, and Sutskever resigned six months later.
Sutskever told Reuters, to his surprise, that SSI was founded as a commercial company, unlike OpenAI, which was a nonprofit. He said he had “identified a mountain that is a little bit different than the one I was working on.”
Gross told Reuters: « It’s important for us to be surrounded by investors who understand, respect and support our mission, which is to jump right into safe superintelligence and in particular to spend a few years doing R&D on our product before bringing it to market. »
Gross added that they spent hours checking candidates for « good character » and were looking for people with extraordinary abilities rather than emphasizing qualifications and experience in the field. « What excites us is finding people who are interested in the work, but not interested in the stage, the hype. »
« Some people can work very long hours and they will follow the same path faster. That’s not really our style. But if you do something different, then it becomes possible for you to do something special, » Sutskever said.
Sutskever, who was born in Russia and immigrated to Israel at age five before moving to Canada a decade later, founded SSI with Gross, who previously led Apple’s AI initiatives, and Daniel Levy, a former OpenAI researcher.
Published by Globes, Israeli business news – fr.globes.co.il – September 4, 2024.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.
