High School Dropout Masters AI with ChatGPT, Joins OpenAI

Gabriel Petersson mastered AI with ChatGPT, joining OpenAI as a researcher.

Gabriel Petersson, who left high school, mastered artificial intelligence to a PhD level using ChatGPT and became a research fellow at OpenAI. He shared his story on the podcast Extraordinary.

Petersson is currently working on the Sora project.

“Universities no longer have a monopoly on fundamental knowledge. It can be acquired through ChatGPT. You start with a problem and then recursively work your way down,” he said.

Petersson joined the OpenAI team in December. Prior to this, he worked as a programmer at Midjourney and Dataland.

In 2019, the developer left school to join a small startup. He was “forced” to learn programming out of necessity.

“We needed to create things, develop product recommendation systems, scraping, integrations,” noted the OpenAI employee.

How to Learn LLM

To understand the workings of LLM, Petersson asked ChatGPT which project to implement and then requested the chatbot to generate code. When errors arose, he corrected them using the model.

He then delved into specific components of the system, gradually mastering key concepts.

“Suddenly, you have all the basic knowledge, and no longer need to move from the bottom up,” he noted.

Petersson emphasized that people should focus on results rather than diplomas. This way, they can prove their worth.

“Companies just want to make money. Show them how to do it, that you can program, and they will hire you,” said the OpenAI employee.

Dropping Out to Succeed

The rapid development of artificial intelligence is opening new opportunities for those who have left school or just graduated. This is discussed in a blog by Andreessen Horowitz.

OpenAI’s head, Sam Altman, did not finish Stanford. He “envies” the current generation of 20-year-olds who have dropped out.

“Because the number of things you can create and the opportunities in this field are incredibly vast,” said the entrepreneur.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp even believes that “everything taught in school and university about how the world works is wrong.” In April, his company launched the Meritocracy Fellowship program—a four-month paid internship for high school graduates who did not enter university.

Back in October, deepfakes featuring Altman flooded OpenAI’s new social app Sora.