There’s Something Very Weird About This $30 Billion AI Startup by a Man Who Said Neural Networks May Already Be Conscious

Three years ago, OpenAI cofounder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever raised eyebrows when he declared that the era's most advanced neural networks might have already become "slightly conscious." That flair for hype is on full display at Sutskever's new venture, another AI outfit sporting the un-subtle name of "Safe Superintelligence." And if you were fretting that OpenAI's business model was suffering from Alice-in-Wonderland logic, Sutskever's new project will have you all the way through the looking glass. As the Financial Times flags, the company just raised another $1 billion, adding to previous investments from deep-pocketed investors at Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital and bringing its valuation up to $30 billion. The wild thing? It's done all that — including attaining a valuation higher than Warner Bros, Nokia, or the Dow Chemical Company — without offering any product whatsoever. In fact, Sutskever has previously bragged, it will never offer a product — until, ... Read full article.