Why was OpenAI surprised by ChatGPT’s success? What does it really mean to “reason” in an AI system? And what’s next for agentic coding and multimodal assistants? OpenAI Head of ChatGPT Nick Turley and Chief Research Officer Mark Chen unpack it all in a conversation that pulls back the curtain on the making of OpenAI’s most iconic product.
00:00 Intro: Meet Nick Turley and Mark Chen
00:40 Origin of the name “ChatGPT”
03:50 ChatGPT’s viral takeoff
07:00 Internal debate before launch
9:40 Evolution of OpenAI’s launch approach
11:00 The sycophancy incident and RLHF
14:45 Balancing usefulness vs. neutrality in model behavior
20:00 Memory and the future of personalization
22:50 ImageGen’s breakthrough moment
29:00 Cultural shifts in safety and the freedom to explore
33:10 Code, Codex, and the rise of agentic programming
37:45 Coding with taste
41:45 Internal adoption of Codex
43:40 Skills that matter: curiosity, agency, adaptability
46:45 OpenAI’s “Do Things” culture
51:30 Adapting to an AI future
55:15 The opportunities ahead: healthcare, research
01:01:00 Async workflows and the superassistant
01:05:40 Favorite ChatGPT tips
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