The two people shaping the future of OpenAI’s research
1 min read
Summary
After years of dominating headlines with seemingly monthly major releases, OpenAI is still seen as being led by its founder Sam Altman, but it’s actually the chiefs of research, Mark Chen and Jakub Pachocki, who are the driving force.
In an in-depth interview, one in each of their roles is to work on AGI, or artificial general intelligence – broadly defined as a machine that can understand or perform any intellectual task a human can.
They say the key is getting models to learn and explore over the long term and “accelerate scientific progress”
Chen and Pachocki remain confident that AI will not only replicate existing human capabilities, but drive new technologies and discoveries that humans cannot currently achieve themselves.
OpenAI has long claimed to be working towards AGI, but many experts believe its focus on language models is a dead end, and recent releases have been iterations on the same theme.
But the ultimate goal – described by Pachocki as “computers developing new technologies themselves” – is what keeps OpenAI focused.