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About 20 former OpenAI employees have joined Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab.
Mira Murati quit OpenAI as its chief technology officer last September, in a move that seemingly even surprised Sam Altman. Now, less than half a year later, she has announced the launch of her own AI start-up, Thinking Machines Lab.
Thinking Machines will foster a culture of “open science” by frequently publishing technical blog posts, papers and code, the start-up said in a blog on its website.
“We think sharing our work will not only benefit the public, but also improve our own research culture.”
The start-up’s aim seems to bridge the gap between the scientific development of frontier AI systems and its practical applications.
The company wrote: “While AI capabilities have advanced dramatically, key gaps remain. The scientific community’s understanding of frontier AI systems lags behind rapidly advancing capabilities.
“To bridge the gaps, we’re building Thinking Machines Lab to make AI systems more widely understood, customisable and generally capable.”
Moreover, Thinking Machines Lab said it will “contribute to AI safety” by “maintaining a high safety bar”, sharing best practices and “recipes” to build safe AI systems, and sharing code, datasets and model specs.
However, the company hasn’t disclosed details on its funding plans or a timeline on the launch of its first product.
Although, a month after Murati quit OpenAI, Reuters reported that she was potentially raising more than $100m for her new AI start-up. However, Thinking Machines has not confirmed that.
Murati is taking the helm as Thinking Machines’ CEO, with a team of 28 AI experts, including Barret Zoph – a former OpenAI VP of research, who is the start-up’s CTO, and OpenAI co-founder John Schulman as its chief scientist.
Schulman, who was the co-lead of ChatGPT, quit OpenAI in August last year to join rival AI company Anthropic – a start-up also created by former OpenAI employees. However, a few weeks ago, he quit Anthropic.
Alongside former OpenAI employees, experts from Meta, HuggingFace and Google’s DeepMind have also joined Murati on her venture.
Moreover, Thinking Machines announced that it is hiring product builders, machine learning experts and a research program manager.
Murati was OpenAI’s interim CEO for a brief period in 2023 during Sam Altman’s ousting from the company.
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