OpenAI co-founder's Safe Superintelligence startup inhales $1B in funding

Wondering if the AI bubble is set to pop? Safe Superintelligence (SSI) has just scored more than $1 billion in investor funding. SSI was co-founded earlier this year by former OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, and its employee numbers have barely cracked double digits. That hasn't stopped investors from pouring cash into …

[Like a badger]

Alright, boys and girls

I'm sick of reading about crapola AI startups that can't do anything useful being showered with billions by greedy, ignorant investors. Who's up to join my VapourAI project?

Vapour AI will hire the best technologists, designers, planners, and IT greybeards*. It will focus on exploring the boundaries of today's limited AI, and build VapourAI's knowledge base and intellectual property. Our aim is not another shallow AI product**, we will avoid and surpass the inaccurate, biased AI solutions of today*** with the aim of selling Vapour AI's thousands of employee years**** expertise into the impending market where those who have thrown money at AI will need to look for the expertise to advise on curtailing or doubling down on their existing investments. Etc etc, insert yet more marketing bilge to make gormless investors drool......

* For the avoidance of doubt this includes any lady Reg forum contributors. We may need a more investor-friendly term though.

** Let's avoid lawsuits, and state in our information memorandum "no product is currently offered or anticipated"

*** By virtue of not having a product

**** That's why we want greybeards, lots of us.

[cyberdemon]

Etc etc, insert yet more marketing bilge to make gormless investors drool......

Don't forget to offer free cocaine and whisky at the funding pitch

[Like a badger]

Re: Etc etc, insert yet more marketing bilge to make gormless investors drool......

You are now VapourAI's Creative Experience Lead.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, I'm in.

Computational power acquisition expertise consultant. ("Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better computer." Position does require Unix experience.)

[Like a badger]

Re: Sure, I'm in.

"Computational power acquisition expertise consultant".

Welcome aboard!

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Re: Alright, boys and girls

Sounds good to me. Can I apply for the office of "senior sinecure technician"?

[Like a badger]

Re: Alright, boys and girls

The role is yours.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: Alright, boys and girls

If you'll accept grey hair in lieu of a greybeard, I'm all in.

I can do nothing that looks like I'm doing something for hours on end and, if needed, make neat Powerpointless charts and graphs full of Venn Diagrams and circles within circles.

I've been involved in a fistful of useless failed projects that sopped up volumes of cash and produced nary a line of working code in the process.

Have your people call my people.

[Like a badger]

Re: Alright, boys and girls

Those skills fit you for the CTO role.

I'll do CEO, so we'll need a CFO - any takers?

And of course experienced external advisors. Liz Holmes has experience in the space in which I want to operate, so if she can get out on day release she's hired. Jeff Skilling and Bernie Ebbers know the ropes too, and both were released early, should be available for work now that their "health problems" have cleared up. Bernie Madoff would have been ideal as investor liaison for my VapourAI (tm) scheme, but unless we can contact him in the afterlife then we'll have to look elsewhere. There's a very easy on the eye Maria Dickerson who looks to have the right skills, although the US Attorney (Eastern District of California) might need a bit of persuasion to drop the 31 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, and securities fraud she's been indicted for.

Obviously VapourAI will be operating purely within the law, we'll just be tapping these experts to understand "what could you have done differently to get the same outcome but without actually breaking the law as it is written?"

[AlanSh]

Re: Alright, boys and girls

I'm happy to be CFO - my background is IT and I don't have an overdraft. Is that enough?

[Like a badger]

Re: Alright, boys and girls

Well, as sole applicant you're hired! I'd also like to flag up how non-discriminatory VapourAI hiring is, with our "blind hiring" policy.

Looks like the senior team is sorted.

[theDeathOfRats]

Re: Alright, boys and girls

My beard is more like salt and pepper (admittedly more salt than pepper, nowadays), but I volunteer for the HellDesk (you said there was no product, right?). I've got lots of silly T-shirts, so I think I should fit.

[Graham Lockley]

Re: Alright, boys and girls

>I'm sick of reading about crapola Dot Com startups that can't do anything useful being showered with billions by greedy, ignorant investors.

SSDD

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Re: Alright, boys and girls

Could I be a "Non-linear neural network layer expert"?

"This is to harness the power of non-linear dynamics within the general framework of deep convolutional layers in current neural network architectures"

Not sure what this will do, but I think it sounds cool

No grey beard, but (thinning) grey scalp with complementary grey stubble when I cannot be arsed to shave in the morning

[cyberdemon]

> Could I be a "Non-linear neural network layer expert"?

Let me step in for Mr Badger for a second and say:

At VapourAI, we have an Equal Opportunities Hiring Policy: We'll literally hire Anyone, until the day we run out of investor's cash.

You're Hired

[[e-mail]]

More of the same

Who do these people think they are? Crypto Tech Bros?

[Ian Johnston]

Sounds like yet another undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is, except that it is something to do with AI. The original was probably apocryphal, but also probably reflected real practice during the South Sea Bubble.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's skibidi rizz! (per Richard)

[Plest]

So let's see here...

$800m on plush offices, bullshit PR stunts and press junkets.

$200m on cloud rental and 50 techies and devs to make it look like they're make some sort of effort.

Give it about 12 months and..."Well tech industry sometimes doesn't work out. We tried but you know how these things go. We've decided to sell the IP to OpenAi for $50m. Laters!"

[breakfast]

It is annoying though

I'm working on a really great (real and largely implemented) product that should help people and pay for itself nicely and if I could get 0.00005% of this we'd be up and running easily. It's a tad frustrating seeing this kind of nonsense being rewarded with impossible fortunes.

[DS999]

Even if they succeed in creating a safe superintelligence

How would that prevent the potential harm that an "unsafe" superintelligence might cause? Because if it is possible for them to create a superintelligence, even with the limits they place on it to make it "safe", by definition it would be possible for others to create their own superintelligence. Maybe more quickly, or even more "super", without those guard rails in place to make it "safe".

So given a choice between using the services of a safe superintelligence and one that doesn't not claim to be safe, which would you choose? Maybe you think it is probably prudent to choose the safe one. But what if the guardrails on it make it cost 10x more for the same service? Would you still choose it? Would you trust others to?

Or let's say they both cost the same and come to market on the same day. I think most of us would probably choose the safe one (assuming we believed it really was safer in some measurable way) But some people will have incentive to choose the unsafe one - because the safe one won't do dirty work for them and the services they want include things like "generate some false information to destroy my opponent in the upcoming election" or "find where my ex-wife has been hiding from me for the last 20 years and harass with constant threats to get her to commit suicide".

Of course this assumes an "unsafe" superintelligence doesn't become Skynet on day one!

[ecofeco]

Why we can't have nice things

Billions and billions are spent on obvious vaporware and failed projects, yet industries can't pay fair wages and won't pay fair taxes.

And then then have the effing gall to say us plebes are lazy and ungrateful.

[IGotOut]

Safe Superintelligence

I can guarantee three things.

I will not be

Safe

Super or

Intelligent

Bit like the department of defense, because department of offence and war, doesn't sound as cuddle.

[Bebu]

"We are assembling a lean, cracked team"

"We are assembling a lean, cracked team"

I assume a typo for "crack" although the British English meaning of "cracked" as crazy, bonkers or insane would make perfect sense in this context.

A team of anorexic nut jobs then?