Ilya Sutskever facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ilya Sutskever
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| איליה סוצקבר | |
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Sutskever at Tel Aviv University in 2023
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Ilya Efimovich Sutskever
8 December 1986 Gorky, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Russia)
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| Education | Open University of Israel University of Toronto (BSc, MSc, PhD) |
| Known for | AlexNet Co-founding OpenAI Founding SSI Inc. |
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| Fields | Computer science |
| Institutions | University of Toronto Google Brain OpenAI |
| Thesis | Training recurrent neural networks (2013) |
| Doctoral advisor | Geoffrey Hinton |
Ilya Sutskever is an Israeli-Canadian computer scientist who is an expert in machine learning. He has made important discoveries in the field of deep learning, which is a type of artificial intelligence (AI). Along with Alex Krizhevsky and Geoffrey Hinton, he helped create AlexNet, a special type of AI that changed how computers "see" images.
Sutskever was one of the founders of OpenAI, a famous AI research company, where he worked as the chief scientist. In 2024, he left OpenAI to start a new company called Safe Superintelligence with his partners Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy.
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Early Life and Schooling
Sutskever was born into a Jewish family in Gorky, Russia, which is now called Nizhny Novgorod. When he was five years old, his family moved to Jerusalem, Israel. At age 16, they moved again, this time to Canada.
He began his university studies at the Open University of Israel. After moving to Canada, he went to the University of Toronto. There, he earned three degrees: a Bachelor's degree in mathematics, a Master's degree, and a PhD in computer science. His teacher and advisor for his PhD was Geoffrey Hinton, another famous AI scientist.
In 2012, while still a student, Sutskever worked with Hinton and Alex Krizhevsky to build AlexNet. This AI needed a lot of computer power, so Sutskever bought many powerful graphics cards (GTX 580 GPUs) to run it.
A Career in Artificial Intelligence
After finishing his studies, Sutskever worked with some of the biggest names and companies in AI.
Working at Google
In 2013, Sutskever joined Google Brain, Google's AI research team. There, he helped create a learning method for AI called sequence-to-sequence. This technology is important for tools that translate languages or have conversations, like chatbots. He also worked on TensorFlow, a popular tool for building AI programs, and was one of the many authors of the paper about AlphaGo, the AI that famously beat the world's best Go player.
Creating OpenAI
At the end of 2015, Sutskever left Google to help start OpenAI. As the company's chief scientist, he played a key role in developing powerful AI like ChatGPT.
In 2022, he tweeted that large AI systems might be "slightly conscious," which started a lot of discussion among experts about whether AI could ever be aware.
In 2023, he started a project at OpenAI called "Superalignment." The goal was to figure out how to make sure that future "superintelligent" AI—AI that could become much smarter than humans—would be safe and helpful.
Changes at OpenAI
In November 2023, Sutskever was part of the board of directors at OpenAI that made a surprising decision to remove Sam Altman as the CEO. Sutskever said the board was doing its duty. However, the decision caused a lot of disagreement. A week later, Altman returned as CEO, and Sutskever stepped down from the board.
In May 2024, Sutskever announced he was leaving OpenAI. He said he was starting a new project that was very important to him. Another leader of the Superalignment project, Jan Leike, also left around the same time.
A New Company: Safe Superintelligence
In June 2024, Sutskever announced his new company, Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI). He started it with Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy. The company's main goal is to create a safe superintelligence. Sutskever said that this will be their only product, and they will not release anything else until it is done.
The company quickly attracted a lot of money from investors. In September 2024, it raised $1 billion. By March 2025, it had raised another $2 billion, showing that many people believe in Sutskever's vision for safe AI.
Awards and Honors
- In 2015, MIT Technology Review named him one of its "35 Innovators Under 35."
- In 2018, he was a main speaker at major AI conferences.
- In 2022, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), a high honor for scientists in the United Kingdom.
- In 2023 and 2024, Time magazine included him on its list of the 100 most influential people in AI.
