Welcoming Jürgen Schmidhuber to Sakana AI (sakana.ai)

Sakana AI has announced the appointment of Jürgen Schmidhuber, widely regarded as the father of modern AI, as its Chief Scientific Advisor. This move aims to spearhead a new era of artificial intelligence that transcends traditional digital interfaces and integrates with the physical world. Schmidhuber, whose foundational contributions include advancements in World Models and deep learning techniques, will oversee the newly established Recursive Self-Improvement (RSI) Lab. His involvement emphasizes the significance of Japan's historical innovations in neural networks and robotics, aiming to merge these domains to create autonomous systems that can interact with and understand the physical environment. This collaboration is poised to revive Japan's legacy in technological innovation, particularly in manufacturing and robotics, through the development of Agent-Native World Models. These advanced models allow for safe simulation of physical actions before implementation, thereby optimizing processes in industrial manufacturing and logistics. With Schmidhuber's guidance, the RSI Lab will foster a compounding cycle of scientific discovery to enhance machine intelligence—a key initiative that could redefine Japan's position at the forefront of AI research and impact global industry practices.