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Silicon Valley Investors Pledge $1 Billion Towards Artificial Intelligence Research Center

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Investors and technology companies in Silicon Valley have banded together to fund a new artificial intelligence research center with $1 billion long-term commitment, of which they only intend on spending a small fraction initially.

The billion dollar research project, which is to be established as a San Francisco based nonprofit known as OpenAI, aims to develop AI technology that can benefit mankind.

In their recent announcement, the nonprofit noted that its patents will be shared freely with the world and their researchers will be “strongly encouraged” to publish any work they produce, be it research papers, blog posts or code. In addition, the organization intends on “freely” collaborating with others to innovative new technologies.

OpenAI’s investors include PayPal co-founders Elon Musk and Peter Thiel as well as LinkedIn co-founder and executive chairman Reid Hoffman and others.

Musk previously donated $10 million to artificial intelligence safety.

As for corporate backers, the project has already reeled in the support of Amazon Web Services and Infosys.

Machine learning expert Ilya Sutskever, who spent three years as a research scientists with the Google Brain Team, has been designated as the organization’s research director.

Greg Bockman, formerly Stripe’s CTO, will fill the role of CTO.

Founding members include, according to the organization’s announcement, “world-class” scientists and engineers.

Sam Altman and Musk will serve as co-chairs and Yoshua Bengio, Vishal Sikka, Sergey Levine and Pieter Abbeel will serve as advisors.

Earlier this year, a humanoid robot exhibited signs of self-awareness after a team of scientists from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s AI and Reasoning Lab in New York executed a self-awareness test incorporating a “dumbing pill” in a variant of “The King’s Wise Men” puzzle.

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