Ought

We’re a non-profit AI research lab. Our goal is to make machine learning solve tasks where success can’t be reduced to a simple metric. We’re working towards a future where ML is as helpful for open-ended questions like 'Should I get this medical procedure?' and 'What career is right for me' as it is for optimizing ad click-through rates. To do this, we build systems that decompose thinking about hard questions into small subtasks, some of which can be automated. We then compositionally build complex thoughts out of these simple pieces. Humboldt talked about natural language as a system that 'makes infinite use of finite means' -- an infinite number of sentences can be created using a finite number of grammatical rules. At Ought, we work on mechanisms that have similar flexible compositionality.