
Ilya Sutskever
Co-founder of Safe Superintelligence Inc.
Co-author of AlexNet and a co-founder and former Chief Scientist of OpenAI. After leaving in 2024 he founded Safe Superintelligence Inc., a lab stating a single product goal and no intermediate commercial releases.
Read them in their own words
Published elsewhere, not by me — so you get real context beyond the name and the title.
Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI Chief Scientist) — Building AGI, Alignment, & Future Models
Recorded before he left OpenAI, so it shows what he believed while still building the models there.
Key arguments & positions
- Argues that superintelligence is a near-term engineering target and that safety must be solved before, not after, it arrives.
- Built Safe Superintelligence Inc. with no plan for intermediate commercial products, on the stated grounds that product pressure distorts safety work.
- Has said publicly that the era of easy gains from scaling pre-training data is ending and that the field needs new research directions.
Accomplishments
- Co-author of AlexNet (2012), the result that started the deep-learning era, with Alex Krizhevsky and Geoffrey Hinton.
- Co-founder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI (2015-2024); co-led the Superalignment team.
- Co-founded Safe Superintelligence Inc. in June 2024.
Papers & key writings
Links
Jobs
What they've said in public about careers, hiring and work. Each point links to its source.
- Public position
Told University of Toronto graduates that AI will eventually surpass human capabilities in all tasks, and that its impact is inevitable: "Whether you like it or not, your life is going to be affected by AI to a great extent."
EdexLive (reporting on his U of Toronto convocation address), June 2025 - Career advice
Advised graduates to accept reality and focus on the next step rather than dwelling on past mistakes: "It's so easy to think about bad past decisions or bad luck. Things are the way they are, what's the next best step?"
EdexLive (reporting on his U of Toronto convocation address), June 2025
In the library
Nothing of theirs is filed in the hub yet. Browse the full library.
Recommended next
Hand-picked from the hub based on what Ilya Sutskever covers.
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Why this: Also about deep learning
Deep Learning Specialization (DeepLearning.AI)
Five-course series on neural networks, convolutional and sequence models, and how to structure ML projects.
Why this: Also about deep learning
UC Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI)
This university research center focuses on creating safe and beneficial artificial intelligence. You can read published research papers, follow recent news and blog updates, and explore opportunities to work with their team.
Why this: Also about alignment
Yoshua Bengio
Deep learning pioneer and Turing Award winner, now focused on AI risk. His site holds papers, talks and written positions; his Google Scholar list has the full publication record, most-cited first.
Why this: Also about deep learning
