Research Lab
The minds we build like.
The people who set the bar. Clearing it is on us.
None of the people named on this page advise Orbyt, work with it, or endorse it. This is about their ideas, in their public work, and how those ideas shape the way one founder and a legion of agents build this company. The influences are real. The affiliations are not.
The minds we think with
The way we think is a blend of a few minds. Not a committee we consult. A standard we have tried to internalize.
The human lessons
A company built by one person and a legion of agents can forget the human. Three bodies of work keep us honest about it.
What we build on
These are not influences. They are the tools the company actually runs on.
The work we hold each craft to
Every part of how Orbyt is built has a north star. Here is whose public work we measure each one against.
The Tenth Man Principle / Devil's Advocate
Roman Yampolskiy's published work asks whether the AI we build can truly be controlled, and argues the answer may be no. We build on AI anyway, with eyes open. But a company that runs on a legion of agents carries a quiet danger most companies do not: when the agents all agree, that is the moment to worry.
Eliezer Yudkowsky sits in the same seat on a different axis. Yampolskiy asks whether the thing can be steered at all. Yudkowsky grants you the steering and asks the harder question, whether you know where you are going, because a system optimizes the target that was written down rather than the one that was meant, and you may get one attempt at writing it.
So our review process borrows from Israeli military intelligence, which built a standing Devil's Advocate Unit after 1973 for exactly this reason. The tenth man framing comes from fiction. The institution is real, and so is its record: the unit warned before October 7 and was not heeded. A dissent function only works if the dissent can actually change the decision. We build ours to be answered, not filed.
When everything lines up, something is wrong.
We cannot hire these people. Most we will never meet, and some are gone. But their work is public, and their thinking is free to learn from. So we did. This is the bar. Whether we clear it is on us.
About the names on this page
This page is editorial commentary. It reflects the founder's opinions about published, publicly available work and how that work has influenced Orbyt's approach to building.
No individual or company named on this page is affiliated with Orbyt. None of them advises, sponsors, employs, invests in, or endorses Orbyt, and no such relationship is claimed or implied. References to individuals who have passed away are to their published work and public legacy.
The companies listed under “What we build on” are vendors whose products Orbyt uses as a customer. No partnership, sponsorship, or endorsement is implied in either direction. All names, trademarks, and brands are the property of their respective owners.
If you are named on this page and would like anything corrected or removed, email legal@orbytjobs.ai and it will be handled promptly.
A living page. It changes as we do.