Tag Archives: superintelligence

A star OpenAI engineer says he’s starting a new team to chase artificial superintelligence

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**OpenAI Star Engineer Will DePue Returns to Lead New Team Aiming for Artificial Superintelligence**

Will DePue, one of the core contributors behind OpenAI’s text-to-video model, Sora, announced on X this Wednesday that he is returning to OpenAI after a long break to start a new team. The newly formed group also includes fellow Sora engineers Troy Luhman and Eric Luhman. Their mission is an “incredibly high-risk bet” with a small but significant chance of achieving artificial superintelligence (ASI), DePue shared.

“We’re keeping the team tight but we’re open to high-slope researchers & engineers interested in making progress in uncharted territory,” he added. As of now, OpenAI has not released additional details about this new team, and the company did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

### Background on Will DePue

Born in 2003, DePue studied computer science at the University of Michigan. According to his personal website, he has “dropped out” and is currently “on leave.” DePue first joined OpenAI in July 2023, and his LinkedIn profile indicates that he has now rejoined the company. During his time at OpenAI, he contributed to training ChatGPT models and played a pivotal role in developing Sora.

Beyond his work at OpenAI, DePue has pursued several personal projects, such as a browser-based GPT implementation, a Turing-complete computer built inside Figma, and an embedding dataset project called the “Alexandria Index.”

### About Troy and Eric Luhman

While not much is publicly known about Troy and Eric Luhman, both have published research papers in machine learning. The trio—DePue, Troy, and Eric Luhman—formed the core team behind Sora, which OpenAI unveiled in February last year. Sora was publicly launched in December 2023, followed by the release of Sora 2 in September 2024.

### OpenAI’s Vision: From AGI to Superintelligence

OpenAI has long emphasized the pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the theoretical milestone when AI can reason and understand like humans. While AGI remains the company’s central mission, CEO Sam Altman signaled in a January blog post that OpenAI is already looking beyond this goal.

He described superintelligence as a future stage where AI systems would reason far beyond human capability. Altman wrote, “Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity.”

As DePue and his team embark on this bold new venture at OpenAI, the AI community will be watching closely for developments on the path toward superintelligence.

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https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-sora-engineer-will-depue-new-team-artificial-superintelligence-2025-10

Better to risk billions than fall behind in AI: Zuckerberg

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**Better to Risk Billions Than Fall Behind in AI, Says Mark Zuckerberg**

*By Akash Pandey | Sept 19, 2025, 2:12 PM*

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reaffirmed his commitment to heavy investment in artificial intelligence (AI) research and development, emphasizing that the greater risk lies in not being aggressive enough rather than overspending.

**A Calculated Risk Amid an AI Bubble**

In a recent episode of the Access podcast, Zuckerberg acknowledged that an AI bubble is “quite possible.” However, he stressed that for Meta, the larger danger would be falling behind in the race to develop transformative AI technologies.

Zuckerberg highlighted the importance of preparing for the advent of superintelligence, warning that companies moving too slowly could find themselves at a significant disadvantage. He described superintelligence as potentially the most important technological breakthrough in history—one that will fuel new products, innovations, and economic value.

> “The risk, at least for a company like Meta, is probably in not being aggressive enough rather than being somewhat too aggressive,” Zuckerberg said.

**Massive Investment in Infrastructure**

To support this vision, Meta has committed to investing at least $600 billion in US data centers and infrastructure by 2028. This figure, revealed earlier this month and confirmed by Meta’s CFO Susan Li, covers data center expansions as well as broader investments in US business operations, including hiring.

**Balancing Growth with Caution**

Despite the massive financial commitment, Meta has recently slowed its recruitment pace after initially offering substantial signing bonuses to attract AI talent. This strategic caution comes amid concerns from Wall Street regarding Meta’s labor costs and the potential dilution of shareholder value through stock-based compensation without clear innovation outcomes.

**Sustainability and Market Position**

Zuckerberg contrasted Meta’s financial stability with other AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, which rely heavily on fundraising to cover expensive compute costs. He asserted:

> “We’re not at risk of going out of business,” unlike these private companies whose futures depend on both AI progress and wider economic factors.

**Preparing for Superintelligence**

Looking ahead, Meta is consolidating its top AI researchers into a small, flat “superintelligence” lab that prioritizes research without rigid deadlines. Zuckerberg emphasized that the company aims to make “compute per researcher” a competitive edge by outspending rivals on GPUs and custom infrastructure necessary for frontier AI development.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s vision underlines Meta’s commitment to leading the AI revolution—even if it means risking billions—to avoid falling behind in what he sees as a defining technological race of our time.
https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/business/risking-billions-on-ai-is-worth-the-gamble-zuckerberg/story