Unlikely AI Sets Ambitious Goals from London and Cambridge

Unlikely AI, an innovative startup, is setting ambitious goals for its future development. Though the company's specific direction is still under discussion, its commitment to building a strong platform is evident.

Location and Talent

One decision has been made: Unlikely AI will be developed out of London and Cambridge. William Tunstall-Pedoe, the founder of Unlikely AI and the technology mastermind behind Amazon's Alexa, emphasized the advantages of these locations. “Obviously we’ve got a much smaller population than in the US and China. But London is a fantastic place to be building an innovative AI startup. There’s lots of talent here. Lots of innovation,” he stated.

Leadership Team

The startup is driven by an experienced leadership team:

• William Tunstall-Pedoe: Founder and CEO, known for his pivotal role in developing the technology behind Amazon's Alexa. His vision and expertise are driving the company's ambitious goals.

• Tom Mason: Former CTO of Stability AI, where he managed the development of major foundational models across various fields and helped raise over $170 million. Now as CTO of Unlikely AI, Mason will oversee its "symbolic/algorithmic" approach.

• Fred Becker: Chief Administrative Officer, with a background including senior roles at Skype and Symphony. Becker will shepherd Unlikely AI's 60 full-time staff, based primarily in Cambridge (U.K.) and London.

Neuro-Symbolic AI Approach

Unlikely AI is exploring Neuro-Symbolic AI, a cutting-edge approach that combines neural networks with symbolic reasoning. This technique aims to bring together the best of both worlds—leveraging the pattern recognition capabilities of neural networks and the logical reasoning of symbolic AI. This innovative approach promises to address some of the limitations of traditional AI models and enhance the overall intelligence of AI systems.

Building a Trustworthy AI Platform

Tunstall-Pedoe elaborated on the team’s approach: “We’re building a ‘trustworthy’ AI platform that’s designed to address pretty much all of the key issues with AI at the moment, as it pertains to hallucinations and accuracy. We’re combining the capabilities of generative AI, statistical AI, with symbolic algorithmic methods, [and] conventional software methods to get expandability and reliability.”

He described the platform as “horizontal” in that it would “compound many different types of applications.” The exact applications remain unspecified, but the emphasis on “trustworthy AI” was clear.

Unlikely AI plans to merge the certainties of traditional software, such as spreadsheets, with the neuro approach in generative AI. “What we’re doing is combining the best of both worlds,” suggested Tunstall-Pedoe. “We’re taking the capabilities of LLMs, of all the advances in deep learning, and we’re combining it with the trustworthiness and expandability and other advantages—including things like cost and environmental impact—of non-statistical machine learning… The vision we have of AI is all of those capabilities, but in a way that’s completely trustworthy.”

Strategic Importance and Ambitious Goals

Given that AI is a top strategic priority for every trillion-dollar market cap company, Unlikely AI's vision aligns with global trends in the industry. The company aims to leverage its strategic positioning and talent pool in London and Cambridge to achieve its ambitious goals. Tunstall-Pedoe highlighted the company's aim for widespread adoption and significant impact in the AI sector. “We want to be massively successful, we want to have a huge impact. We’re certainly open to different ways of achieving that,” he added.

Cost and Environmental Benefits

Tunstall-Pedoe also pointed out that their combined approach will bring cost and environmental benefits compared to today’s large language models (LLMs). “These models are incredibly expensive [to run] and environmentally unfriendly, but they are also costly in terms of trust by producing answers that are wrong,” he said.

Conclusion

Unlikely AI is poised to make significant strides in the AI industry from its bases in London and Cambridge. With a clear focus on innovation and major adoption, the company is ready to make a substantial impact.