Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s former chief scientist who left the company last month, is leading a new startup to rival OpenAI.
According to a Wednesday post on X, Sutskever’s new company has “one focus, one goal, and one product” in mind — a safe superintelligence or SSI.
SSI is also the new startup’s name.
I am starting a new company: https://t.co/BG3K3SI3A1— Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut) June 19, 2024
SSI’s website, though barebones with just one page of text at the time of writing, outlines that Sutskever, former Apple director Daniel Gross, and former OpenAI engineer Daniel Levy have started the world’s first safe superintelligence lab.
“We approach safety and capabilities in tandem,” the site reads. “We plan to advance capabilities as fast as possible while making sure our safety always remains ahead.”
The statement about developing safety hand-in-hand with new AI aligns with a previous comment from AI expert Sahil Agarwal, a Yale PhD in applied mathematics.
Agarwal told Entrepreneur last month that innovation and safety aren’t two things that have to be balanced. They are, instead, inseparable as a company grows.
“You’re not stopping innovation from happening when you’re trying to make [AI] more safe and secure for society,” Agarwal said.
Related: Now that OpenAI’s Superalignment Team Has Been Disbanded, Who’s Preventing AI from Going Rogue?
Sutskever left OpenAI last month after co-founding it nearly a decade ago and serving on the board.
The move followed a November controversy in which Sutskever and other board members fired OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
They brought Altman back less than a week later, after most of OpenAI’s employees threatened to quit in a mass exodus to Microsoft unless he was reinstated.
Ilya Sutskever (right) and Sam Altman (center). Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images
Sutskever and his co-lead on an AI safety project, Jan Leike, resigned from OpenAI on the same day.
While Sutskever stated he was “confident” that OpenAI would build “safe and beneficial” AI under Altman’s leadership in his parting statement, Leike said he left because “over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products” at OpenAI.
Related: Former OpenAI Board Member Reveals Why She Had CEO Sam Altman Fired
OpenAI is currently valued at $80 billion.
