Unlikely AI, the British artificial intelligence (AI) start-up founded by entrepreneur William Tunstall-Pedoe, is delighted to announce two significant additions to its executive team and reveal more detail about its generative AI platform.

Tom Mason has been appointed as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and Fred Becker joins as Chief Administrative Officer (CAO). Mason comes from Stability AI, where he served as Chief Technology Officer, leading the engineering division for the Stability AI Platform. They both join a growing team whose engineers have previously worked at Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and many other leading tech companies.

Mason has overseen the development of breakthrough foundational models across various fields, including use in imaging, language, code, audio, video, 3D content, design, biotech, and scientific research and assisted the company in raising over $170m in venture capital. His previous roles include Chief Technology Officer at Chorus Intelligence, a global data platform for law enforcement, and founder of tech accelerator YouSoft.

A more transparent, trustworthy approach to generative AI

At Unlikely AI, Mason will drive the development of Unlikely AI’s platform aimed at delivering superhuman, trustworthy general intelligence and reasoning abilities through combining the fantastic opportunities created using LLMs with the trust, accuracy and explainability of symbolic/algorithmic methods. This approach to generative AI is known as “neurosymbolic AI”, and Unlikely AI aims to lead the development of it as a complementary alternative to the black box nature of other solutions such as the technology behind ChatGPT.

Unlikely AI’s approach is designed to overcome the risks inherent in current mainstream approaches to LLMs, including explainability, bias, hallucination, accuracy and trust. The symbolic components of its platform also have a strong environmental benefit over existing technologies.

Mason comments: “I joined Unlikely AI due to the incredible team, their capabilities, domain expertise, and focus on solving enormously valuable problems. This ambition combined with the current industry landscape, creates a unique opportunity which I could not be more excited to be a part of. This is a perfect recipe for innovation, achievement, and success.”

Becker, the company’s new CAO, brings over 20 years of experience in scaling technology firms across Europe and North America. He has played a pivotal role in the growth of major companies such as Skype and Symphony, and will now take on financial and operational responsibilities at Unlikely AI.

Becker comments: “I could not be more excited to join a team with Unlikely AI’s capabilities and track record. Having previously provided leadership at a number of high growth startups, Unlikely AI is showing all the signs of becoming another break-out success.”

Both Tom and Fred will report directly to William Tunstall-Pedoe, founder and CEO of the company who is best known for his key role in the creation of Alexa following the acquisition of his previous voice assistant startup Evi Technologies by Amazon in 2012.

Tunstall-Pedoe commented on both Mason and Becker joining: “We have been fortunate to continue to attract top talent to Unlikely AI, including Tom and Fred, who join an incredibly strong and talented team of more than 60, a large majority of whom are engineers and scientists. Our team has joined Unlikely AI from leading companies including: Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Palantir, IBM, Improbable and many others. The United Kingdom is a top global location for AI innovation and talent and we are proud to be pioneering a new approach to machine intelligence from here.”