He addresses this in the interview. In terms of research background, you're right. But he's someone with a history of original thought and as he states, it's n

He addresses this in the interview. In terms of research background, you're right. But he's someone with a history of original thought and as he states, it's not clear that we're at the stage of machine learning where useful contributions from newcomers taking a different direction are vanishingly unlikely. I'm sure OpenAI wouldn't have offered him a job if they thought he couldn't contribute anything of value.