Today marks the end of an era for xAI as one of its founding engineers, Igor Babuschkin announces their departure to focus on AI safety research and startup incubation through a new venture, Babuschka Ventures.
Who is Igor Babuschkin?
Igor Babuschkin who previously worked as a Deep Mind’s Alphastar Star craft Agent. His parents left Russian Federation after the collapse of the USSR in search of a better life for them. So as an immigrants their life was not easy. Despite the ups and down of life his parents believed human values are priceless : values like courage ,compassion , curiosity for understanding the world. He (Igor Babuschkin) was a great admirer of Richard Feynman and Max Plank. He left Elon Musk team of xAI. He joined in 2023 and both he and Elon Musk felt for a new AI company with different kind of mission.
Coming from a completely different background and being a PhD student at CERN in Switzerland of Particle Physics, his eagerness was to solve the mysteries of Universe. So he was excited and completely devoted to the research at CERN.
From Particle Physics to AI: A Journey to xAI:
Though he ( Igor Babuschkin ) is a main stream physicist but his search for mysteries of Univese was getting harder and harder requiring bigger and bigger collider, while new discoveries kept getting fewer.
So few questions aries in his mind,
- Is superintelligence replace larger collider?
- Is this is the key of unlocking the mysteries of Universe?
- Consistant theory of Quantum Gravity can be replaced by AI?
- Could AI prove the Riemann Hypothesis?
In early 2023 Igor Babuschkin was convinced that human were getting close to super intelligence and very soon on the wall of writing AI will surpass the human writing art of intelligence. he mentioned that Elon Musk warned about the dangers of powerful AI for years. So their purpose to build xAI is to use of AI for human benefit. Therefore he recruited many like minded engineers. He ( Igor Babuschkin ) describes their journey to build xAI from their very initial days. Experts told them that they were very late in this AI research field. So it was almost impossible to develop a top level company from that zero position. His hard work to build the team by making a efficient and dedicated team was so well balanced. He also mentioned that his team members are deeply dedicated. According to him ( Igor Babuschkin ) their efforts made history by research and development company. He also mention in his x account that he learned two priceless lessons from Elom Musk.
- ” be priceless in rolling up your sleeves to personally dig into technical problems.
- have a maniacal sence of urging .”
Their team has fixed a target of 120 days to build the Memphis Super Cluster .AI training facilities, which was next to impossible according to Industry Veterans. But they were confident to achieve goal to get training set up running at scale on the Memphis Cluster ASAP. Their work environment despite lots of pressure creates a family like emotional attachment helps to forget them day and night efforts. He (Igor Babuschkin ) describes every single things in the x account that one night when finally Elon Musk posted their success story at 4:20 am. He expresses his love and gratitude toward the whole dedicated team of xAI. He thanks every single person of his xAI team. His tearful exit vibrate his heart a lot.
New Babuschkin ventures:
Now he is moving towards to work his announcement of launch of Babuschkin Ventures, which supports AI safety research and backs start ups in AI and agentic systems that advance humanity and unlock the mysteries of Universe.
- Source : x.comhttps://x.com/ibab
