All About Prafulla Dhariwal, Indian Tech-Whiz Behind OpenAI's GPT-4o

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is all praise for Prafulla Dhariwal, a tech specialist from India, who played a key role in launching the company's latest flagship AI model, ChatGPT 4o (“o” for Omni). 

In a post on X, Mr Altman claimed that “GPT-4o would not have happened without the vision, talent, conviction, and determination” of Mr Dhariwal. He further said that his efforts, alongside those of many others, "led to what I hope will turn out to be a revolution in how we use computers."

Who is Prafulla Dhariwal?

1. Originally from Pune, Prafulla Dhariwal is the Head of Omni at OpenAI. He is the co-creator of several AI models, including GPT-3, DALL-E 2, Jukebox, Glow and PPO, as per his X bio. 

2. He studied computers, math and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 2017. 

3. Mr Dhariwal is also a research scientist at OpenAI since February 2017, helping in AI advancements, reveals his LinkedIn. He also did a research internship at OpenAI and conducted research at MIT on deep learning for speech and computer vision. 

4. He was awarded a gold medal at the International Astronomy Olympiad (IAO) in 2009, held in China and another gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in 2012, hosted in Argentina. He won his third gold medal at the International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) in Denmark in 2013. 

5. In 2009, the Government of India honoured Mr Dhariwal with the National Talent Search Scholarship in 2009. In 2013, he scored the all-India rank of 153 in the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Exam (IITJEE).