The Breakthroughs Needed for AGI Have Already Been Made: OpenAI Former Research Head Bob McGrew cover art

The Breakthroughs Needed for AGI Have Already Been Made: OpenAI Former Research Head Bob McGrew

The Breakthroughs Needed for AGI Have Already Been Made: OpenAI Former Research Head Bob McGrew

Listen for free

View show details

About this listen

As OpenAI's former Head of Research, Bob McGrew witnessed the company's evolution from GPT-3’s breakthrough to today's reasoning models. He argues that there are three legs of the stool for AGI—Transformers, scaled pre-training, and reasoning—and that the fundamentals that will shape the next decade-plus are already in place. He thinks 2025 will be defined by reasoning while pre-training hits diminishing returns. Bob discusses why the agent economy will price services at compute costs due to near-infinite supply, fundamentally disrupting industries like law and medicine, and how his children use ChatGPT to spark curiosity and agency. From robotics breakthroughs to managing brilliant researchers, Bob offers a unique perspective on AI’s trajectory and where startups can still find defensible opportunities. Hosted by: Stephanie Zhan and Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital Mentioned in this episode: Solving Rubik’s Cube with a robot hand: OpenAI’s original robotics research Computer Use and Operator: Anthropic and OpenAI reasoning breakthroughs that originated with OpenAi researchers Skild and Physical Intelligence: Robotics-oriented companies Bob sees as well-positioned now Distyl: AI company founded by ex-Palintir alums to create enterprise workflows driven by proprietary data Member of the technical staff: Title at OpenAI designed to break down barriers between AI researchers and engineers Howie.ai: Scheduling app that Bob uses

What listeners say about The Breakthroughs Needed for AGI Have Already Been Made: OpenAI Former Research Head Bob McGrew

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.