John Carmack, the game developer who co-founded ID Software and served as Oculus’ CTO, is working on a new venture — and it’s attracted capital from some big names.
Carmack announced Friday that his new artificial intelligence startup called Keen Technologies (perhaps a reference to the moniker “Commander Keen”) has raised $20 million in funding from former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Ku co-founder Daniel Gross. Stripe said founder and CEO Patrick Collison, Shopify founder and CEO Toby Luttke and Series A venture fund Sequoia were among those who invested in the round.
“This is a focused effort for me. I could write a $20M check myself, but knowing that other people’s money is on the line gives me more discipline and commitment. I’ve been talking about that for a while, and I’m glad Nate pushed me on it.” He said on his Twitter page.
AGI, short for “artificial general intelligence,” is a category of AI systems that can theoretically perform any task a human can. That’s in contrast to AI systems today, which are designed for narrow, specialized applications like generating art, driving cars, and playing video games. Some optimists believe that AGI may be available within the next century, thanks to emerging algorithmic techniques and increasingly powerful computer hardware. Others, like Yann LeCun, chief scientist at Carmack’s current employer, are skeptical that AGI will ever become a reality.
For his part, Carmack seems to be firmly in the Optimistic Camp. Speaking on a recent podcast, MIT research scientist Lex Friedman said he believes AI will one day become a “universal remote worker” with behavior similar to that of a human or living creature.
“I don’t believe in getting up too fast… [but] I think we will go from the level we started to see [AI-powered] Things that look like animals,” Carmack said. “I think it’s closer to human intelligence than animal intelligence, which a lot of people like to think about, and … there’s a similar aspect to how the brain has evolved and the cortices and processes that are done there.
Carmack went on to say that his interest in AGI was inspired by Sam Altman, who he says tried to recruit him to join OpenAI. (Altman is one of the original co-founders of OpenAI, a high-profile AI research lab in San Francisco.) Altman, who has previously said he expects AI to one day surpass human intelligence, spoke about his concerns about AGI — especially how it could harm society if it’s built or misused. .
Carmack will still consult with Meta on VR issues, but says his work with the social juggernaut is only 20% of the time. Carmack moved to an “advisory CTO” position at Oculus in November 2019 to devote more time to researching AI.
Carmack isn’t the only veteran technologist who recently found a great AI startup. For almost a year, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and founding DeepMind member Mustafa Suleiman have been building Inflection AI, a startup that seeks to translate human communication into a language that computers can understand. Dario Amodei, former VP of research at OpenAI, is one of the co-founders of Anthroposic, which will study the properties of AI text generation systems like OpenAI’s GPT-3 for most of 2021 and into this year.
