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OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever has been named CEO of his synthetic intelligence startup Safe Superintelligence. His predecessor, Daniel Gross, lately left, reportedly to affix Meta’s new superintelligence division devoted to constructing AI fashions that would surpass human capabilities.
Sutskever informed his workforce that Gross’s work at Safe Superintelligence had been “winding down,” one thing they had been already conscious of, in a message he later posted on X. He additionally mentioned that the corporate’s co-founder, Daniel Levy, could be promoted from Principal Scientist to President.
Last week, in an inside memo, Mark Zuckerberg revealed the workforce members of Meta Superintelligence Labs. It included Alexandr Wang, the founding father of data-labelling startup Scale AI, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and 11 engineers from the likes of OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic. The Meta boss had reportedly been providing $100 million signing bonuses to attain the workforce he needed, which shall be led by Wang.
Gross was conspicuously absent from the memo. Zuckerberg approached Gross after Sutskever declined his proposal to affix Meta and promote Safe Superintelligence earlier this yr, sources informed CNBC. The firm was valued at over $30 billion in February, regardless of not having a product or income.
Sutskever hinted at this in his CEO announcement. “You might have heard rumors of companies looking to acquire us,” he wrote on X. “We are flattered by their attention but are focused on seeing our work through.”
While Meta has but to substantiate Gross’s hiring, there are indicators of a budding partnership. This week, Facebook’s guardian firm reportedly supplied to purchase a minority stake in NFDG, the enterprise agency Gross co-founded with Nat Friedman, based on the Wall Street Journal. If each founders are actually at Meta and NFDG is not making new investments, as Friedman confirmed, Meta’s supply might give restricted companions an opportunity to money out at full worth.
The race to superintelligence continues
Sutskever, who left OpenAI in May 2024 after practically a decade as its chief scientist, co-founded Safe Superintelligence in June 2024 with Gross, a former AI lead at Apple, and Levy, an ex-OpenAI researcher. Now, as CEO, Sutskever says the technical workforce will proceed reporting to him, emphasising that the corporate doesn’t want outdoors interference to realize its mission.
“We have the compute, we have the team, and we know what to do,” Sutskever mentioned in his X publish. “Together we will keep building safe superintelligence.”
Nevertheless, he isn’t alone in chasing that aim. When Zuckerberg introduced Meta Superintelligence Labs, he mentioned his firm was “uniquely positioned” to ship superintelligence. He mentioned Meta has sufficient money to accumulate the numerous compute sources required, a observe file of delivering merchandise to billions of individuals, expertise in AI {hardware} akin to sensible glasses, and an organization construction that enables it to take large swings.
Whether security shall be a precedence, like it’s at Safe Superintelligence, stays to be seen, however Meta’s popularity relating to privateness and safety has not been stellar.
Meanwhile, OpenAI introduced in January that its main aim for the yr could be the event of superintelligence. Then, final month, Sam Altman mentioned his firm had “recently built systems that are smarter than people in many ways.”
Sam Altman thinks that Meta poaching OpenAI staff for Meta’s new superintelligence division is “considerably…
