Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a brand-new artificial intelligence company founded by ex-OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has secured $ 1 billion in funding to build safe AI systems that might become smarter than the human brain. The company with headquarters in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv revealed the intention of using the funds to obtain computational resources and attract outstanding talent for employing a limited number of a close-knit team consisting of researchers and engineers.
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While SSI refused to state its estimated value, insiders estimated that the three-month-old company is worth $ 5 billion. Other participating investors are some of the well-established venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, and SV Angel. According to Reuters, SSI’s CEO Daniel Gross stressed the need to involve investors willing to back up the company’s strategy aimed at developing safe AI before putting it on the market.
A Focus on AI Safety Amid Industry Debate
The matter of AI safety is relevant for SSI and the tech industry since the community continues the discussion on how to regulate AI. This discussion has been prompted by concerns that AI could turn against its creators or humanity at large, eliminating it. New legislation introduced in California to regulate AI safety was met with a split response, with OpenAI and Google being against the bill, and Anthropic, as well as Elon Musk’s xAI being for the bill.
Sutskever, one of the most influential personalities in AI is one of the co-founders of SSI and recently left OpenAI in May after various incidents like the removal of Altman from OpenAI’s CEO post and his subsequent reinstatement. Sutskever is also working on scaling AI at SSI in a fashion different from his work at OpenAI, but he declines to elaborate on the details of it. The company is also focusing on finding good character and extraordinary skills in candidates for the position instead of focusing on experience alone.
Building a New Path for AI Development
Presently having 10 employees, SSI planned for the next few years of its operation majorly involved in research to develop the product before launching it in the market. CEO Daniel Gross stated that culture is critical in hiring, and he is in the process of finding partners who are cloud providers and chip makers to solve the problem of computing power. Admittedly, there are no partnerships with such AI startups such as SSI directly, but they rely on infrastructure providers like Microsoft and Nvidia.
Sutskever, who throughout the years was an advocate for scaling AI models through quantity of computing power, suggested that SSI recognizes that scaling will be done differently than OpenAI, and will not be copying what other AI companies will be doing. Thus, the further development of SSI is an attempt to produce AI for the beneficial purpose that is safe and in compliance with human values to expand in the increasingly competitive AI market.
