xAI co-founder will start his own AI venture
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence business xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin announced on Wednesday that he has left the company and intends to form an investment firm that specializes in AI safety research.
Musk accused industry leaders of excessive censorship and inadequate safety regulations when he founded xAI in 2023 to counter Big Tech’s AI drive.
Igor Babuschkin, the former head of engineering and co-founder of Elon Musk’s AI business xAI, has stepped down. Igor will launch “Babuschkin Ventures” to focus on AI research and safety.
Babuschkin stated that he is quitting the organization to pursue the “next chapter” of his goal in a post on X on Wednesday. Our goal is to create artificial intelligence in a way that is both safe and advantageous to people.
According to Igor Babuschkin, humanity has a bright future even though the Singularity is approaching.
I created xAI in 2023 with Elon Musk, and today is my last day there. I can still clearly recall my first encounter with Elon. We discussed AI and the future for hours. We believed that humanity needed an AI firm that would take a fresh approach.
My childhood dream has been to create AI that benefits humanity. I had a lot of respect for scientists like Max Planck and Richard Feynman when I was younger. As a PhD student studying particle physics at CERN, I was ecstatic. However, the number of new discoveries was decreasing and new discoveries were getting more challenging, necessitating larger colliders.
Before taking charge of engineering for infrastructure, product, and applied AI projects, Babuschkin, who was previously employed at Google’s DeepMind and OpenAI, explained xAI’s early rush to develop models and infrastructure, claiming to have developed “many of the foundational tools” for starting and running training jobs.
His departure comes amid growing competition among AI players like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, which are investing heavily in training and implementing cutting-edge systems. It also follows the departure of Robert Keele, the legal head of xAI, earlier this month.
Then it occurred to me: might artificial intelligence develop a sound theory of quantum gravity? What if AI validated the Riemann hypothesis? I started to believe that superintelligence was within our grasp in early 2023. AI has the potential to surpass human intelligence in the near future.
How to use this technology for good was the question. Elon had long warned about the perils of artificial intelligence. We both came to the realization that we had the same vision: AI that would benefit humanity. We then created xAI after gathering additional engineers.
I will now begin the next phase of my life. I am inspired by my parents, who came to this country to provide their kids a better life. I’m launching Babushkin Ventures, which will fund firms that advance humankind in AI and agential systems and solve the universe’s mysteries while also promoting AI safety research. The future of humanity is bright, but the Singularity is imminent.
The business was formed by Elon Musk on March 9, 2023.
The business was formed by Elon Musk on March 9, 2023.
The first reports of xAI surfaced in April. Then, on March 9, 2023, Elon Musk founded a new business named XAI, according to a Wall Street Journal article. Musk is the only named director of the corporation, which has its headquarters in Nevada, Texas, in the United States. The director of Musk’s family office, Jared Birchall, has been named secretary of the firm.
