Ilya Sutskever, the co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI who in November joined other board members to force Sam Altman, the company’s high-ranking CEO, to help found a new artificial intelligence company.
The new start-up is called Safe Superintelligence. Its goal is to produce superintelligence — a machine that is smarter than humans — in a safe way, according to company spokeswoman Lulu Cheng Meservey.
Dr. Sutskever, who said he regretted taking action against Mr. Altman, declined to comment. Bloomberg reported the news earlier.
Dr. Sutskever, 38, left OpenAI last month and announced at the time that he would start a new project, but did not provide details. Ms Meservey declined to say who is funding the company or how much it has raised. He said that as it creates a safe overshoot, the company will not release any more products.
Dr. Sutskever co-founded the company with Daniel Gross, who worked on artificial intelligence at Apple, and Daniel Levy, who worked with Dr. Sutskever on OpenAI. The title of Dr. Sutskever at the new company will be chief scientist, but describes his role, according to Ms Meservey, as “responsible for revolutionary discoveries”.
In November 2022, OpenAI captured the world’s imagination with the release of ChatGPT, an online chatbot that could answer questions, write tasks, generate computer code, and even mimic human conversation. The tech industry quickly embraced what it called generative artificial intelligence: technologies that can generate text, images and other media.
Many experts believe these technologies are poised to reshape everything from email programs to Internet search engines and digital assistants. Some believe this transformation will have as much impact as the web browser or smartphone.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)
Mr. Altman became the face of the movement toward productive artificial intelligence as he met with lawmakers, regulators and investors around the world and testified before Congress. In November, Dr. Sutskever and three other OpenAI board members unexpectedly ousted him, saying they could no longer trust him with the company’s plan to one day create a machine that can do anything the human brain can do.
Days later, after hundreds of OpenAI employees threatened to quit, Dr. Sutskever said he regretted his decision to remove Mr. Altman. Mr. Altman returned as chief executive after he and the board agreed to replace two board members with Brett Taylor, a former Salesforce executive, and Lawrence Summers, a former US Treasury secretary. Dr. Sutskever effectively stepped down from the board.
Last year, Dr. Sutskever helped create a Superalignment group within OpenAI that aimed to ensure that future AI technologies do not harm. Like others in the field, he became increasingly concerned that artificial intelligence could become dangerous and perhaps even destroy humanity.
Jan Leike, who led the Superalignment team with Dr. Sutskever, has also resigned from OpenAI. It has since been hired by OpenAI competitor Anthropic, another company founded by former OpenAI researchers.
