Ripple and Stellar founders invest $1 billion to develop AGI through research on human brain mechanisms

Odaily Planet Daily reports that Ripple and Stellar founder Jed McCaleb will invest $1 billion from his approximately $3.9 billion cryptocurrency fortune through his nonprofit organization Astera Institute to develop AGI systems based on the principles of the human brain. Additionally, he has also pledged to invest $600 million in the field of neuroscience.

Astera Institute, located in Emeryville, is currently planning to record the neural activity patterns of mice performing tasks through brain-machine interfaces, and then translate the research findings into new AI architectures, with future experimental subjects expanding to monkeys and humans. The AGI project at the institute is led by former DeepMind executive Dileep George, who plans to expand the lab to 30 researchers this year and publish research findings publicly.

McCaleb believes that the current mainstream Transformer architecture only achieves the capability of prediction, lacking key elements such as planning, decision-making, and motivation, and that new directions need to be explored. He stated that AI based on human brain principles is more likely to be understood and controlled by humans. Former Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun’s new lab, AMI, has also recently completed a $1 billion seed funding round to advance similar “world model” research. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, however, holds a different view, believing that achieving AGI requires multiple medium-scale breakthroughs rather than a single new direction.