François Chollet Launches New AI Lab Focused on AGI

François Chollet Launches New AI Startup, Ndea

A new venture is being initiated by François Chollet, a highly regarded researcher in the field of artificial intelligence, with the objective of constructing cutting-edge AI systems utilizing innovative designs.

Ndea, the name of this startup, will function as both an AI research facility and a scientific laboratory. Its primary goal is to “develop and operationalize” AGI. AGI, or artificial general intelligence, commonly denotes AI possessing the capacity to execute any intellectual task a human being can. This represents a significant ambition for numerous AI organizations, notably OpenAI.

A Novel Approach to Artificial General Intelligence

“We are pursuing a distinct methodology for building AI with genuine inventive capabilities, adaptability, and innovation,” Chollet stated in a series of posts on X. “We maintain a belief that we possess a limited, yet genuine, opportunity to achieve a breakthrough – the creation of AI that can learn with at least the same efficiency as humans, and which can continually improve over time without encountering any limiting factors.”

The plan at Ndea involves employing a technique known as program synthesis, alongside other technical strategies, to unlock the potential of AGI. Chollet posits that program synthesis, which enables AI to generalize solutions to previously unseen problems from a minimal number of examples, could be instrumental in resolving some of the most challenging issues in AI research.

Traditionally, program synthesis has been a computationally demanding process. However, Chollet believes this constraint can be overcome, and that doing so will significantly accelerate scientific advancement.

“We are not the only ones recognizing the promise of program synthesis – it’s a technique that every leading AI laboratory is now beginning to investigate,” a post on Ndea’s website explains. “We are on the verge of a crucial moment in scientific history, and the world merits every feasible, direct, and unique effort to build AGI.”

Founding Team and Funding

Ndea is being co-founded by Chollet and Mike Knoop, the co-founder and head of AI at Zapier. The company has not yet revealed if it has secured funding from external investors. Nevertheless, current job postings for remote research positions indicate some level of financial support is in place.

Knoop has indicated he will be transitioning away from his daily responsibilities at Zapier to dedicate his focus to Ndea, while still maintaining his position on Zapier’s board.

“We are in the process of assembling a world-class team specializing in program synthesis,” Knoop shared on X. “Our initial concentration is on deep learning-guided program synthesis to develop AGI capable of invention, adaptation, and innovation… But even more compelling is the opportunity to, in effect, fast-forward into the future: to learn, invent, and discover things that would not naturally occur for decades or even centuries.”

Chollet's Background and the Growing Trend of Independent AI Labs

Chollet, who recently established a nonprofit organization with Knoop dedicated to creating benchmarks for AGI, is the latest prominent AI researcher to depart from a major technology company to establish an independent AI laboratory. He is widely recognized as the creator of Keras, an open-source, high-level API used for building AI models and addressing machine learning challenges. Chollet announced his departure from Google last November after nearly ten years with the company.

Ilya Sutskever, the former chief scientist and co-founder of OpenAI, founded Safe Superintelligence last year, an AI lab that has garnered over $1 billion in investment from firms including Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz. Furthermore, Fei-Fei Li, a long-time Google AI researcher and Stanford academic, leads World Labs, a company focused on developing AI systems capable of generating video game-like 3D simulations.

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