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i highlighted this last night which seems to be making the rounds - https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1699369076529971545 https://twitter.com/swyx/status/16993690

by swyx 3y ago

i highlighted this last night which seems to be making the rounds - https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1699369076529971545 https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1699369076529971545 Alec's CV (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alecradford/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alecradford/) seems to be: - 2011-2016 BSc Eng from Olin College - 2013+ started a data/AI consultancy as a sophomore that turned into a vague startup/product? - 2015 first paper on GANs coauthored with soumith https://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.06434.pdf%C3 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.06434.pdf%C3 - 2016 first GAN paper under openai email https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2016/file/8a3363abe792db2d8761d6403605aeb7-Paper.pdf https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2016/file/8... - 2017 the generative reviews paper mentioend in the Wired article, with Ilya https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.01444.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.01444.pdf - 2017 coauthor on PPO paper (precursor to instructgpt/rlhf) https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.06347.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.06347.pdf). - 2018 lead author on GPT1 https://www.mikecaptain.com/resources/pdf/GPT-1.pdf https://www.mikecaptain.com/resources/pdf/GPT-1.pdf - 2019 lead author on GPT2 https://insightcivic.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/language-models.pdf https://insightcivic.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/language-mod... blog https://openai.com/research/better-language-models https://openai.com/research/better-language-models - 2019 coauthor on RLHF https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.08593.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.08593.pdf) - 2020 coauthor on gpt3 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165 - 2020 coauthor on scaling laws https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.08361.pdf%E4%B8%AD%E5%BE%97%E5%88%B0%E4%BA%86%E8%A7%A3%E9%87%8A https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.08361.pdf%E4%B8%AD%E5%BE%97%E5%88... - 2021 coauthor on DallE http://proceedings.mlr.press/v139/ramesh21a/ramesh21a.pdf http://proceedings.mlr.press/v139/ramesh21a/ramesh21a.pdf - 2021 coauthor on Codex https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.03374.pdf?trk=public_post_comment-text https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.03374.pdf?trk=public_post_comment... - 2023 lead author on Whisper https://proceedings.mlr.press/v202/radford23a/radford23a.pdf https://proceedings.mlr.press/v202/radford23a/radford23a.pdf name a more successful 7 year CS career post undergrad... Update: FYI openai just announced a "developer day" in Nov - somehow not blessed by the HN gods https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408234

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mustafa_pasi 3y ago
They all have crazy CVs. If you're really talented in the US you can get very far on talent alone. If he was in Germany he's be a Ph.d or Postdoc toiling in some outdated research field that nobody cares about. The CTO has an even crazier CV. Born in the poorest European country, BSc at Dartmond (is that considered a good uni? idk), internship at GS, a stint at Tesla, couple of startups and hits gold with OpenAi. A BSc in mechanical engineering wouldn't even get you a job in Germany.
- swyx 3y ago
  maybe Europe needs to lighten up a little on the credentialism. (i am not at all saying this is exclusive to europe tho)
  - mustafa_pasi 3y ago
    Definitely, but it is not our only problem. We don't get those lucrative internships and neither do we get the boatloads of startup capital. It's all caused by the same risk averse mentality, though.
    - cushpush 3y ago
      The "risk averse" mentality is insightful to me, attempting to comprehend what cultural differences my (European issue) parents engage the world with
      - mustafa_pasi 3y ago
        Oh, it's definitely one of the most distinctive difference between US and Europe. Of course it is not all the same. Germans are on the more conservative side, while the Dutch are known to be more entrepreneurial. But overall none is on the same level as you Americans.
    - troupo 3y ago
      It's caused by "a business that loses billions of dollars a year for over a decade isn't a sustainable business" mentality. The US is the exact opposite. Even OpenAI, however amazing it is, is not a business (yet?). It's a money sink.
Der_Einzige 3y ago
I had an opportunity to interview with Indico and some of the people around Alex (i.e. Slater). Still not sure if not pursuing that further was a mistake or not.
api 3y ago
I am very happy to see an actual researcher and innovator get a significant piece of the proceeds from their work. This used to be a fairly rare event. The fact that it's becoming more common is a sign of progress.
- mustafa_pasi 3y ago
  Definitely. It is why I like to say that when it comes to the upper two quarters of income/wealth, there is way way way more upwards economic mobility in the US than in Europe. Here in Germany it is very easy to go from broke to middle class if you are talented. But going from talented to rich is impossible. There is no access to capital so people fight over the few good paying corporate positions and even there you mostly get the position through nepotism.
intelVISA 3y ago
A true 10xer. Respect.
jackleeb 3y ago
david luan yale applied math grad (2013) ceo of startup (2011-2017) openai director then promoted to openai vp (2017-2020) google director (2020) this is 7 years out of undergrad he left google director position (7 digits/year btw) to become founder ceo of adept ai, which is now valued at $1 billion this guy is more impressive in terms of career progression (not research)
- gardenhedge 3y ago
  Super genius or well connected?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - swyx 3y ago
    i'm sure those things correlate
mike_hearn 3y ago
Although that is impressive, isn't it just a side effect of the way AI companies have a culture of publishing research papers, some of which these days are sort of more elaborate blog posts? There are probably quite a lot of people who have worked on some cool projects 7 years out from graduation, but in fields where they don't get to publish papers about it.

by swyx 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mustafa_pasi 3y ago

They all have crazy CVs. If you're really talented in the US you can get very far on talent alone. If he was in Germany he's be a Ph.d or Postdoc toiling in some outdated research field that nobody cares about. The CTO has an even crazier CV. Born in the poorest European country, BSc at Dartmond (is that considered a good uni? idk), internship at GS, a stint at Tesla, couple of startups and hits gold with OpenAi. A BSc in mechanical engineering wouldn't even get you a job in Germany.

swyx 3y ago
maybe Europe needs to lighten up a little on the credentialism. (i am not at all saying this is exclusive to europe tho)
- mustafa_pasi 3y ago
  Definitely, but it is not our only problem. We don't get those lucrative internships and neither do we get the boatloads of startup capital. It's all caused by the same risk averse mentality, though.
  - cushpush 3y ago
    The "risk averse" mentality is insightful to me, attempting to comprehend what cultural differences my (European issue) parents engage the world with
    - mustafa_pasi 3y ago
      Oh, it's definitely one of the most distinctive difference between US and Europe. Of course it is not all the same. Germans are on the more conservative side, while the Dutch are known to be more entrepreneurial. But overall none is on the same level as you Americans.
  - troupo 3y ago
    It's caused by "a business that loses billions of dollars a year for over a decade isn't a sustainable business" mentality. The US is the exact opposite. Even OpenAI, however amazing it is, is not a business (yet?). It's a money sink.

Der_Einzige 3y ago

I had an opportunity to interview with Indico and some of the people around Alex (i.e. Slater). Still not sure if not pursuing that further was a mistake or not.

api 3y ago

I am very happy to see an actual researcher and innovator get a significant piece of the proceeds from their work. This used to be a fairly rare event. The fact that it's becoming more common is a sign of progress.

mustafa_pasi 3y ago
Definitely. It is why I like to say that when it comes to the upper two quarters of income/wealth, there is way way way more upwards economic mobility in the US than in Europe. Here in Germany it is very easy to go from broke to middle class if you are talented. But going from talented to rich is impossible. There is no access to capital so people fight over the few good paying corporate positions and even there you mostly get the position through nepotism.

intelVISA 3y ago

A true 10xer. Respect.

jackleeb 3y ago

david luan yale applied math grad (2013) ceo of startup (2011-2017) openai director then promoted to openai vp (2017-2020) google director (2020) this is 7 years out of undergrad he left google director position (7 digits/year btw) to become founder ceo of adept ai, which is now valued at $1 billion this guy is more impressive in terms of career progression (not research)

gardenhedge 3y ago
Super genius or well connected?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- swyx 3y ago
  i'm sure those things correlate

mike_hearn 3y ago

Although that is impressive, isn't it just a side effect of the way AI companies have a culture of publishing research papers, some of which these days are sort of more elaborate blog posts? There are probably quite a lot of people who have worked on some cool projects 7 years out from graduation, but in fields where they don't get to publish papers about it.