Who Is Prafulla Dhariwal, The Indian Prodigy Behind OpenAI' GPT- 4o ? (image@prafulladhariwal.com)
“My name sounds like truffle, but with a P”. This is how Prafulla Dhariwal introduces himself on his website. Dhariwal from Pune is someone whom Indians can be proud of. He is the mastermind behind the groundbreaking creation of GPT-4o (o-Omni), the latest update of the artificial intelligence that powers ChatGPT. He leads the Omni team at OpenAI.
As the GPT-4o marks its foray into the natively multimodal models, Dhariwal is immensely happy. Earlier this week, Open AI unveiled its latest flagship AI model GPT-4o. However, not until the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman”s recent repost on X (formerly twitter), no one was aware of the prodigy behind the innovation.
Responding to Dhariwal”s X post appreciating “awesome team who made this magical modal even possible”, Altman wrote that GPT-4o would not have happened without the “vision, talent, conviction, and determination” of Dhariwal.
GPT-4o would not have happened without the vision, talent, conviction, and determination of @prafdhar over a long period of time. that (along with the work of many others) led to what i hope will turn out to be a revolution in how we use computers. https://t.co/f3TdQT03b0
— Sam Altman (@sama) May 15, 2024
It was only then, the world became aware of the contribution of the prodigious Pune native in the revolutionary development.
Prafulla Dhariwal led a remarkable journey of accomplishments. Computer Science (Mathematics) graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), walked out with a perfect GPA of 5.0/5.0. He started to grab headlines for his marvelous achievements from 2009 onwards, when he won the National Talent Search Scholarship from the Government of India. The same year, he also won the gold medal at the International Astronomy Olympiad in China. In 2012 and 2013, Dhariwal won gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad and the International Physics Olympiad, respectively.
Dhariwal joined the OpenAI in 2016, as a research intern and then climbed up ranks as a research scientist at a company that was working on generative modals and unsupervised learning. Notably, he is one of the co-creators of GPT-3, text-to-image platform DALL-E 2, music generator Jukebox, and reversible generative model Glow.
The GPT-4o was launched on May 13. According to the CEO chief technology officer of OpenAI, Mira Murati, the GPT-4o is twice as fast, and half as cost as the GPT-4 Turbo. While talking at the OpenAI Spring Update event, Murati said, “GPT-4o reasons across voice, text, and vision. And with this incredible efficiencies, it also allows us to bring the GPT-4o intelligence to our free users. This is something we have been trying to do for many, many months”.
