Skyfall AI, a new company founded by former Maluuba co-founders Sam Pasupalak and Kaheer Suleman, aims to develop AI world models that can run a company with few or no humans required. The company plans to acquire an existing business for up to $1 million USD and install an AI CEO to demonstrate “enterprise super intelligence.”
Background
Pasupalak and Suleman previously worked at Maluuba, a deep learning research lab that was acquired by Microsoft in 2017. Maluuba was a frontrunner in Canada’s AI research ecosystem and worked on deep learning problems that now underpin large language models.
The founders’ new venture, Skyfall AI, is developing AI world models that simulate the physical world, which they believe can perform operational work with greater efficiency than large language models. Pasupalak said, “Our vision is to democratize the technology so that every business can run as autonomously as they can.”
Acquisition Plans
Skyfall AI is currently shopping for “micro-B2B-SaaS” businesses to acquire and plans to double the acquired company’s revenue in six months. The company has backing from investors including Inovia Capital and Garage Capital.
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Pasupalak wants to prove that world models are superior to large language models in areas such as long-horizon planning and high-stakes decision-making with uncertainty. He believes that world models can integrate cause and effect, rather than just pattern matching.
Karamdeep Nijjar, partner at Inovia Capital, wrote in a LinkedIn post that Pasupalak’s focus is on real-world applicability rather than static benchmarks that reward brute force approaches.
World Models vs. Large Language Models
World models are trained on physical, spatial, and movement data about the environment, rather than text data. This allows them to build an internal 3D representation of the world and integrate cause and effect.
Pasupalak’s team was partly inspired by a paper he co-authored last year, which studied the limitations of large language models in playing the ’90s-era business simulator game RollerCoaster Tycoon.
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Job Displacement Concerns
Skyfall’s experiment, where the machine takes over human roles, has raised concerns about job losses stemming from AI integration. Labour market experts and the broader public have expressed fears about mass white-collar job loss due to AI.
Pasupalak argues that having AI handle operational work will eventually allow people to do artistic and creative work. “Humans should work on things they’re very passionate about, and we don’t want humans to do the boring, monotonous, operational tasks,” he said.
Skyfall AI moves forward with its plans.
It will be important to see how the company’s use of world models to automate business operations plays out, and what impact it will have on the job market.
