#8 -- D. Scott Phoenix, Co-founder of Vicarious. Building human-level AI, "humanity's last invention"

Scott Phoenix founded his first startup at age 16. By age 19 or 20, he got interested in Artificial Intelligence ("AI") because, according to Scott, "of all the things a person could work on, if you actually figure out how to build the first human-level AI, then you’ve solved all the other problems. You could have the AI then help you to solve any problem that a human could solve.”

Scott started a few companies in between his 16th year and the founding of Vicarious -- his company that's "on a mission to build the next generation of artificial intelligence algorithms." He says that solving a very large problem is a key to his motivation around Vicarious. "Having a company whose core purpose in life is what I’m on fire to do and whose impacts would be really groundbreaking is something that makes me feel way more alive than any of the things that I’ve done before Vicarious."

Scott's thoughts on this topic, his talent, his team, and his intense commitment have attracted the attention of investors including Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Ashton Kutcher, Marc Benioff, and a host of other internationally regarded leaders in tech.

“We have a moral imperative to build this invention b/c the second we do it will have tremendous benefits to society. Every day we don’t have it, there are a tremendous number of things that go wrong that wouldn’t go wrong if we had really smart AIs to help us”