Jakub Pachocki and Szymon Sidor: Building AI

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the world, raising urgent questions about its impact, governance, and the future of human-machine collaboration. As AI systems become more capable, society faces challenges around safety and the balance of power. What does it mean to build and deploy technology that can reason, create, and potentially automate research itself? How do leading researchers navigate the technical and ethical frontiers of this new era?

Jakub Pachocki, Chief Scientist at OpenAI, and Szymon Sidor, Technical Fellow at OpenAI, share their journeys from early programming competitions in Poland to shaping some of the most advanced AI systems in the world. They discuss the evolution of AI research, the technical and emotional challenges of building breakthrough models, and the profound societal questions that come with unprecedented progress.

2:42 - Origin story: high school to OpenAI

6:31 - “AI enlightenment” and AlphaGo moment

17:12 - Early OpenAI culture and impostor syndrome

23:30 - Power duo dynamic and collaboration

27:25 - Shift to reasoning models

36:23 - Possibilities of AGI

42:12 - OpenAI’s pandemic efforts showed AI’s immaturity

51:15 - Governance lessons from crisis

55:39 - AI safety and optimism for the future