Synth Labs, a new startup focused on ensuring AI systems align with human intentions, has secured seed funding from Microsoft’s venture capital fund M12 and heavy-tech player, Eric Schmidt’s First Spark Ventures. This investment comes as a growing number of major industry players like OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are giving priority attention to the potential risks of AI technology not always carrying out as desired by its creators.

Alignment, as the issue of ensuring AI’s actions match human intentions is termed, presents significant challenges. Such challenges mostly emerge in AI applications like chatbots built atop large language models trained on substantial amounts of internet data. Synth Labs’ solution to this problem is aimed at steering and customizing large language models.

Synth Labs has its origin in non-profit AI research lab, EleutherAI, and was started by some high-profile individuals in the AI industry. This includes the likes of Louis Castricato and Nathan Lile, the founders, and Francis deSouza, former CEO of biotechnology company Illumina Inc.

The startup’s products are designed to help ensure that AI models are evaluated and aligned correctly. Over recent months, the company has developed tools to readily evaluate large language models on complex topics. The objective, according to Castricato, is to democratize access to easy-to-use tools that can automatically evaluate and align AI models.

Lile further explained their approach, stating, “We’re thinking about designing some of these early tools really is all about giving you the opportunity to decide what alignment means for your business or your personal preferences.”

The funding secured by Synth Labs has not been revealed, but its focus on tackling the alignment issue in AI systems potentially sets the stage for it to make a significant contribution towards reducing the risk of AI adoption across diverse industries.

Source: Microsoft, ex-Google CEO back startup that aims to make AI systems work as humans intended.