Former OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever
Establishes 'SSI' Aiming for Safe General Artificial Intelligence
Last year, Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI who led the ousting of Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, announced the establishment of a new artificial intelligence (AI) startup.
On the 19th (local time), Sutskever introduced the startup 'SSI' (Safe Superintelligence) account on X (formerly Twitter), saying, "I am starting a new company" with "one goal and one product: building safe superintelligence." He also emphasized, "The company is focused on achieving both safety and functionality, pursuing a business model free from short-term commercial pressures." Daniel Gross, who led Apple's AI division, and Daniel Levy, who developed large language models (LLM) at OpenAI, joined SSI as co-founders.
In an exclusive interview with Bloomberg, Sutskever stated, "Safe superintelligence basically means it should not cause large-scale harm to humanity," adding, "I want to operate (the product) based on freedom, democracy, and the successful values that have supported them for hundreds of years." He further explained, "While LLMs will still play an important role in superintelligence, current systems only end at speaking and conversing," and that he aims for a much more powerful and general-purpose system.
Bloomberg noted, "(Sutskever's) goal is to create safe and powerful AI systems within a pure research organization that has no intention of selling products or services in the short term," and "He wants to continue working without many of the distractions faced by competitors like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic."
Sutskever was an early member who founded OpenAI in 2015 alongside CEO Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He served as a director and chief scientist at OpenAI, playing a key role in developing ChatGPT. However, he disagreed with CEO Altman over the company's AI development speed and safety neglect issues, leading the effort to remove Altman as CEO in November last year. After facing strong internal backlash, he expressed regret over his decision and worked to resolve the situation.
After Altman returned as CEO within five days, Sutskever stepped down from the board and announced his departure from OpenAI on the 14th of last month via X. At that time, he said, "I am confident that OpenAI will build safe and beneficial AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) under the leadership of CEO Altman and others," reiterating the importance of safety in AI development.
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