A team of former DeepMind researchers just raised $50M to build an AI lab built around recursive self-improvement at the level of the whole research organization, not only a single model.
Index and Radical co-led, NVIDIA's venture arm is in, and angels like Dwarkesh Patel, Thomas Wolf and Max Jaderberg are on the cap table.
The founders have the track record to back it up. Louis Kirsch comes out of the Schmidhuber lineage on self-improving systems. Edward Hughes has argued that open-endedness is essential for artificial superhuman intelligence. Tantum Collins worked on AI policy in the Biden White House.
Their idea is simple and big at the same time. Today's models are great at answering questions, but real discovery also depends on knowing which questions are worth asking. Inherent wants AI that works right next to humans inside that loop, as a collaborator and not only a tool. They call it living within the experiment.
They also set it up as a Public Benefit Corporation, so the mission is written into the company from day one. This is the direction a lot of us have been hoping for, and one of the more credible attempts at recursive self-improvement I've seen so far. Really excited for it.
We’re excited to introduce Inherent, a lab designed from scratch to build AI agents that discover new knowledge.
The coming era of machine-driven scientific inquiry demands a new kind of research institution and a new kind of AI.
To achieve our mission, we live within the experiment, recursively self-improving the entire research organisation. We investigate questions including:
- What does ‘AI taste’ look like in the sciences, and how can we build an institution that embraces this new aesthetic of discovery? - What new kinds of human-machine teaming will make the most of AI that can truly innovate? - How can we build recursive self-improvement at the collective level that continually increases human agency over outcomes?
We have just closed a $50m seed round led by @IndexVentures and @radicalvcfund, with participation from other outstanding investors including NVentures (@nvidia's venture capital arm), @buildexante, Metaplanet, Macroscopic, @MythosVentures, Charlie Songhurst, @chalfs, @jluan, @dwarkesh_sp, @Thom_Wolf, @j_foerst and @maxjaderberg. We are advised by @matthewclifford.
Inherent is a Public Benefit Corporation headquartered in London.
