Two tech luminaries quit their jobs to build AI inspired by fish and bees

A new artificial intelligence research lab aims to solve the field’s most pressing problems by drawing inspiration from the animal kingdom — like the movements of a school of fish or the coordination of a colony of bees.

As many of the top companies in the field seek to outdo each other by building ever-larger AI systems, Sakana, which takes its name from the Japanese word for fish, thinks it may be able to do more with less data. The startup plans to make multiple smaller AI models, the kind of technology that powers products like ChatGPT, and have them work together. The idea is that a “swarm” of programs could be just as smart as the massive undertakings from larger organizations.