OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who along with other executives ousted the company's high-profile CEO, Sam Altman, in November, has helped start a new artificial intelligence company.
The new startup is called Safe Superintelligence, and it aims to create superintelligence — machines that are more intelligent than humans — in a safe way, according to company spokesperson Lulu Chen Messabay.
Dr. Sutskever, who said she regretted speaking out against Mr. Altman, declined to comment. The story was reported earlier by Bloomberg.
Dr. Sutskever, 38, left OpenAI last month, announcing at the time that she was starting a new project but giving no details. Mesavey declined to say who is funding the company or how much it has raised. While it's building a secure superintelligence, the company has no plans to release any other products, Mesavey said.
Sutskever founded the company with Daniel Gross, who worked on AI at Apple, and Daniel Levy, who worked with Sutskever at OpenAI. Sutskever's title at the new company will be chief scientist, but Meservey said she described her role as “responsible for revolutionary breakthroughs.”
In November 2022, OpenAI garnered worldwide attention with the release of ChatGPT, an online chatbot that can answer questions, write term papers, generate computer code, and even mimic human conversation. The tech industry has rapidly embraced what's known as generative artificial intelligence, a technology that can generate text, images, and other media.
Many experts believe these technologies will reshape everything from email programs to internet search engines to digital assistants, with some saying the transformation will be as impactful as that of web browsers and smartphones.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement of news content related to the AI system.)
Altman became the face of the movement toward generative AI, meeting with lawmakers, regulators and investors around the world and testifying before Congress. In November, Dr. Sutskever and three other OpenAI executives abruptly fired him, saying they could no longer trust him with the company's plans to one day build machines that can do anything the human brain can.
Days later, after hundreds of OpenAI employees threatened to resign, Dr. Sutskever said he regretted the decision to fire Altman. Altman returned as CEO after reaching an agreement with the board to replace two directors with former Salesforce.com executive Brett Taylor and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. Dr. Sutskever effectively resigned from the board.
Last year, Sutskever helped found a team within OpenAI called the Superalignment Team, which aims to ensure that future AI technology will not do harm. Like other researchers in the field, she was increasingly concerned that AI could become dangerous, even potentially destroying humanity.
Jan Leike, who led the Superalignment team with Dr. Sutskever, also left OpenAI and was subsequently hired by Anthropic, a rival company of OpenAI, also founded by former OpenAI researchers.