People still remember the entire mess with OpenAI's executives, particularly when several board members successfully but briefly ousted the company CEO Sam Altman. It eventually led to the responsible parties exiting OpenAI, and some are already busy building an AI company that follows their vision.
Ilya Sutskever's AI startup
In case you don't know, Ilya Sutskever was a co-founder of OpenAI. He was the Chief Scientist of the company and was said to be the leader of the board members who voted to oust Sam Altman. Now that the former board member is free from his responsibilities, he aims to begin anew.
Sutskever just announced that he will be launching a new AI company called Safe Superintelligence or SSI. "We will pursue safe superintelligence in a straight shot, with one focus, one goal, and one product," the former executive said on X.
The company already has an account of its own on the microblogging site, wherein it stated that SSI is their mission, name, and entire product roadmap because it is their sole focus. It will be dedicating its resources to creating a safe AI.
SSI continued: "Our singular focus means no distraction by management overhead or product cycles, and our business model means safety, security, and progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures," as per CNBC.
Sutskever will be developing the company with Daniel Gross, who was part of Apple's AI team, as well as Daniel Levy, who is also a former employee of OpenAI. With safety as its priority, it would be interesting to see what the group comes up with.
Similar to His Aim for OpenAI
Ilya Sutskever is an advocate for safe AI and had major contributions to the success of OpenAI, which is why his exit is almost as shocking as Altman's ouster as CEO. Even his goal for SSI seems like an answer to what OpenAI allegedly fails to do based on why Altman was fired in the first place.
According to former board member Helen Toner, the group decided to remove Altman as CEO because of his failure to provide accurate information about the company's safety processes, which he has done "on multiple occasions," as per The Verge.
They then planned to go behind the reinstated CEO's back since it was clear to all of them that if Altman knew about it, "he would pull out all the stops, do everything in his power to undermine the board" so that they wouldn't be able to fire him.
The OpenAI CEO was even accused of creating a toxic atmosphere within the company, wherein there were instances of "psychological abuse," even providing evidence of Altman "lying and being manipulative in different situations."
Toner further explained one instance that shows the lack of transparency, wherein the board did not even know that ChatGPT was being launched back in 2022 and that they only learned about the release after reading about it on X.
There are other instances where OpenAI has been painted as the villain, especially with all the lawsuits claiming that the company has stolen copyrighted materials to train its AI, as well as other security issues regarding its chatbot.
