"My name sounds like truffle, but with a P."
No, this isn't some cheesy pickup line. It's how Prafulla Dhariwal introduces himself on his website. And he's more than just a catchy introduction — Dhariwal is the mastermind behind the creation of GPT-4o (with the 'o' standing for Omni).
Dhariwal leads the Omni team at OpenAI, and GPT-4o marks their first foray into natively multimodal models. Earlier this week, OpenAI unveiled its latest flagship AI model GPT-4o at its Spring Update event, showcasing its ability to reason across voice, text, and vision.
But until OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's recent post on X (formerly Twitter), the world knew little about this Pune native.
“GPT-4o would not have happened without the vision, talent, conviction, and determination of Prafulla Dhariwal 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,” Altman said in the post.
Who is Prafulla Dhariwal?
Dhariwal's journey has been marked by a string of remarkable accomplishments.
In 2009, 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, he won gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad and the International Physics Olympiad, respectively.
His Class XII performance was nothing short of stellar, evidenced by his remarkable score of 295 out of 300 in the physics-chemistry-mathematics (PCM) group. He even excelled in entrance exams, securing 190 in the Maharashtra Technical Common Entrance Test (MT-CET) and 330 out of 360 in the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE-Mains).
He was even awarded the annual Abasaheb Naravane memorial prize in 2013, instituted by the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE).
“In class XII I studied throughout the year and my special focus was on JEE preparations as I wanted to study in IIT. But now, I am more than happy that I have also been selected in MIT,” Dhariwal had told the Mid-Day newspaper in 2013.
Dhariwal hails from Pune, India, and has always been a child prodigy, winning tech competitions since his early years. His parents recognised his natural talent at a very young age. “When he was only one-and-a-half years old, we bought a computer,” his mother recalled in an old interview.
She added that whenever Prafulla’s dad sent an email, he would sit next to him, eager to learn. At 11, he designed his first website.
His feats don’t end there. Prafulla also featured in a Pogo ad called ‘Amazing Kid Genius’ and received a scholarship for a 10-day trip to NASA.
In high school, he scored 295 out of 300 in the physics-chemistry-mathematics (PCM) group in his Class XII exams and achieved a score of 190 in the Maharashtra Technical Common Entrance Test (MT-CET). Additionally, he scored 330 out of 360 in the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE-Mains).
Prafulla received the prestigious Abasaheb Naravane Memorial Award for achieving the highest marks in PCM. He also represented India in international Olympiads, including the International Astronomy Olympiad in China and the International Mathematics Olympiad in Argentina.
After completing high school, Dhariwal chose to pursue his undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) instead of IIT. He studied there from 2013 to 2017, majoring in computer science and mathematics.
When asked if it was a tough choice to make between IIT and MIT, he said, “Absolutely! Both institutes are the best. Fortunately, MIT is providing me a scholarship that includes both tuition fees and residential facilities. That’s why I have decided to go to MIT,” said Dhariwal in an old interview.
Dhariwal pursued his Bachelor's in Computer Science (Mathematics) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating in 2017 with a perfect GPA of 5.0/5.0.
Dhariwal joined OpenAI in May 2016 as a research intern and grew up the ranks as a research scientist at the company working on generative models and unsupervised learning. 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.
Prior to joining OpenAI, Dhariwal had short stints as a software engineering intern at Pinterest, a quantitative analyst intern at the D.E. Shaw Group, and as an undergraduate researcher at both the Centre for Brain, Mind and Machines, and the Computer Visions Group at MIT.
OpenAI recently released GPT-4o at its latest Spring Update event, which won hearts with its ‘omni’ capabilities across text, vision, and audio. OpenAI’s demos, which included a real-time translator, a coding assistant, an AI tutor, a friendly companion, a poet, and a singer, soon became the talk of the town.
However, little did the world know that an Indian who was a child prodigy, Prafulla Dhariwal, was behind it until OpenAI chief Sam Altman posted about it on X.
“GPT-4o would not have happened without the vision, talent, conviction, and determination of Prafulla Dhariwal 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,” posted OpenAI chief Sam Altman on X, praising Dhariwal’s efforts behind GPT-4o.
“GPT-4o (o for ‘Omni’) is the first model to come out of the Omni team, OpenAI’s first natively fully multimodal model. This launch was a huge org-wide effort, but I’d like to give a shout out to a few of my awesome team members who made this magical model even possible!” posted Dhariwal on X, highlighting the contributions of his team.
The Journey So Far
After completing his undergraduate degree, Dhariwal joined OpenAI in 2017 as a research scientist, focusing on generative models and unsupervised learning.
Dhariwal has also worked on the Jukebox project, a generative model for music that can create high-fidelity and diverse songs with coherence for several minutes. This model uses a multi-scale VQ-VAE to compress raw audio into discrete codes, which are then modeled using autoregressive Transformers.
Building on his expertise in generative models, Dhariwal has also contributed to the development of diffusion models that outperform GANs in image synthesis. These diffusion models achieve superior image sample quality and can be used for both unconditional and conditional image synthesis, further showcasing his impact on the field of AI.
Moreover, he has made significant contributions to advanced AI models, such as Glow for generating high-resolution images quickly, the Variational Lossy Auto-encoder to prevent issues in autoencoders, PPO (Proximal Policy Optimisation) for reinforcement learning, and GamePad for applying reinforcement learning to formal theorem proving.
With OpenAI’s model now capable of engaging in natural, real-time voice conversations, the next pitstop for OpenAI appears to be music generation, and undoubtedly, Dhariwal will be at the center of it all.
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