As Microsoft and OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, Meta, and other major A.I. companies conduct a race, there is a startup called Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), that is quietly developing superintelligent A.I.
The Five Most-Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- Superintelligent A.I. surpasses human intelligence.
- Safe Superintelligence Inc. was founded by Ilya Sutskever, a major name in the A.I. world who was a key player in OpenAI’s rise to Silicon Valley superstardom.
- Safe Superintelligence Inc. managed to fundraise $1 billion, so there is definitely interest in developing this technology.
- Though this sounds like a nonprofit-y pure-research endeavor, SSI is actually a for-profit corporation. So, it is highly likely that business owners will be in the target market of SSI once its products hit the market.
- For business owners, the very existence of a superintelligent A.I. systems could have profound implications on business as we know it.
The Significance for Business Owners
A machine that surpasses the capabilities of human intelligence would consequently be able to answer questions that human intelligence is incapable of answering.
It can be difficult to imagine the truly impossible questions business owners could give to a superintelligent A.I.
Some calculations, for instance, are difficult but not impossible for a human being to perform. That is especially the case in business, where it is pretty much always preferable to get a high-quality answer to an important question sooner than later.
For instance, even small-business owners could benefit from a superintelligent A.I. system that could predict with high accuracy things like customer churn, prices of raw materials, any potential supply-chain issues caused by weather events or political instability in certain regions, etc.
But are there some questions that are just out of the range of human intelligence? For instance, is it possible for A.I. to solve the Riemann Hypothesis, which has sent the best and brightest and most-obsessive mathematicians down spirals of failure for centuries now. And if it does so, could we ever know whether it was truly impossible for a human being to solve the problem?
Something worth thinking about is that a superintelligent A.I. system may solve a problem that could deeply affect business owners. For instance, the Riemann Hypothesis mentioned above would have profound implications on cybersecurity, essentially opening the door for encryption as we know it to be fundamentally compromised.
That would effectively render insecure the encrypted communications and data that many businesses rely on encryption to safeguard against cybercriminals.
Wait, What Even Is “Safe” Superintelligence
If you were thinking you would get even an objectionably simplistic definition of this on the SSI web site, that is not the case.
So, anyone wanting to get a stronger sense of what safe superintelligence is will have to get some broader context here.
Worth noting is that the founder of SSI was one of the board members of OpenAI who voted to oust OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who was quickly reinstated after the ouster.
(For those following A.I. for some time, that ouster was one of the more-dramatic happenings in recent history. There has even been a play staged based on those wild few days.)
That can shine a light on some of the ideas put forth on the SSI website, such as this quote: “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.”
Could that be a potshot at OpenAI’s management, which has dedicated itself to change its status from nonprofit company focused on developing safe A.I. into a commercial juggernaut? Probably, but this blog is not a Silicon Valley gossip column, so back to the question of what safe superintelligence even is.
One could imagine that safe superintelligence would not be the kind of A.I. that would manipulate human users into doing anything illegal or dangerous.
Nor would it contribute to anything like the mass extinction of the human race.
That may, at the end of the day, be the goal in developing safe A.I., which is to create A.I. where the guardrails have been put in place, and the developers are confident that the A.I. will not find a way to cleverly hop those guardrails.
The Last (But Not Least) Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
Business owners could certainly get a lot out of a superintelligent A.I.
It could solve problems and answer questions related to a business’ operations and customer base at an unprecedented pace.
But on the other hand, the use of superintelligent A.I. in, say, the context of pure research or mathematics could end up having profound negative consequences for business owners.
Plus, what is to stop another A.I. company with the know-how and resources to create “superintelligence” without that pesky “safe” modifier attached? Whether that A.I. would end up helping business owners in the long run remains to be seen.
Other Great GO AI Blog Posts
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