The Slow Hunch

I spoke to Fraser Kelton, General Partner at Spark Capital and the former Head of Product at OpenAI. Fraser played a key role in the launch of ChatGPT, which is widely considered AI's "iPhone moment."

Before his stint at OpenAI, Fraser built Koko, a platform that was initially built to provide cognitive behavioral therapy at scale, transitioned to AI-driven online content moderation, and eventually acquired by Airbnb in November 2018. 

At Airbnb, as Fraser experimented with early models like BERT and GPT-2 to scale Koko's content moderation efforts, he realized that transformer models could "turn all of the internet into training data," dramatically accelerating the progress of AI.

Fraser cold emailed Ilya Sutskevar and ended up joining OpenAI—helping them transition from a research lab into a company that ships compelling consumer and enterprise products. He offered a behind-the-scenes look at the development of GPT-3 and ChatGPT, and the decisions that led up to their release.

Looking ahead, Fraser discussed how transformer architectures could be applied to biology, disrupting traditional medicine as we know it. He spoke about how we are overestimating the short-term impact of AI, and under-appreciating the scale of change over the next 10-30 years.

Throughout his career, Fraser has been driven by a mission to support brilliant technologists in creating a better future. His insights offer a glimpse into the past, present, and future of AI at a pivotal moment in the technology's development. Enjoy!

Chapters
  • 00:00:00 Cold open
  • 00:02:56 Fraser's background as a founder and at OpenAI
  • 00:04:33 The origin story of Koko and online cognitive behavioral therapy
  • 00:10:22 Koko’s pivot to content moderation
  • 00:13:15 Playing with BERT and GPT-2 at Airbnb
  • 00:28:00 Cold emailing Ilya Sutskevar and joining OpenAI
  • 00:35:00 The cultural moment of ChatGPT's launch
  • 00:42:20 Overestimating short-term impact and underestimating the long-term potential of AI
  • 00:44:13 The transformative potential of AI in biology and medicine
  • 00:48:02 Supporting brilliant technologists to create a better future
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The Slow Hunch is produced by the team at Spectral. 

What is The Slow Hunch?

The Slow Hunch explores how big ideas form over long periods of time. Big innovations are often characterised as single “eureka” moments, when in fact they're often the culmination of many smaller ideas coalescing over a long period of time. On this podcast, USV's Nick Grossman explores how those ideas took shape, and the nonlinear paths of the people behind them.