Jakub Pachocki (born 1991) is a computer scientist and former competitive programmer. He is best known as

OpenAI OpenAI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines ...

's chief scientist and for his role in overseeing development of

GPT-4 Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) is a multimodal large language model trained and created by OpenAI and the fourth in its series of GPT foundation models. It was launched on March 14, 2023, and made publicly available via the p ...

Background

Pachocki was born in 1991 in

Gdańsk Gdańsk is a city on the Baltic Sea, Baltic coast of northern Poland, and the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. With a population of 486,492, Data for territorial unit 2261000. it is Poland's sixth-largest city and principal seaport. Gdań ...

, Poland. In high school, he was a six-time finalist of the

International Olympiad in Informatics The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual competitive programming competition and one of the International Science Olympiads Student competition, for secondary school students. The first IOI was held in 1989 in Pravetz, Bulgar ...

. He won a silver medal in 2009. Pachocki obtained his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the

University of Warsaw The University of Warsaw (, ) is a public university, public research university in Warsaw, Poland. Established on November 19, 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country, offering 37 different fields of study as well ...

. He represented his university at the

International Collegiate Programming Contest The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition among the universities of the world. Directed by ICPC Executive Director and Baylor Professor William B. Poucher, the ICPC oper ...

with his team winning a gold medal and coming second place overall in 2012. In the same year he was also the champion of the

Google Code Jam Google Code Jam was an international programming competition hosted and administered by Google. The competition began in 2003. The competition consists of a set of algorithmic problems which must be solved in a fixed amount of time. Competitors ...

. From 2011 to 2012, Pachocki worked at

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

as a software engineering intern. Pachocki attended graduate school at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

where he obtained his PhD.

Career

After graduation, Pachocki did postdoc work at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

and Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing.

OpenAI

In 2017, Pachocki joined

. In 2021, he became OpenAI's research director where he led the development of GPT-4 and

OpenAI Five OpenAI Five is a computer program by OpenAI that plays the five-on-five video game ''Dota 2''. Its first public appearance occurred in 2017, where it was demonstrated in a live one-on-one game against the professional player Dendi, who lost to it ...

. In May 2024, he became chief scientist after his mentor

Ilya Sutskever Ilya Sutskever (; born 8 December 1986) is an Israeli-Canadian computer scientist who specializes in machine learning. He has made several major contributions to the field of deep learning. With Alex Krizhevsky and Geoffrey Hinton, he co-inv ...

left the company. OpenAI CEO

Sam Altman Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American technology entrepreneur, investor, and the chief executive officer of OpenAI since 2019 (he was Removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI, briefly dismissed and reinstated in November 2023). He ...

has called Pachocki "easily one of the greatest minds of our generation".

Competitive programming achievements

: Silver medal (2009) *

World Finals: Gold medal (second place overall in 2012) *

: Champion (2012), Third place (2011) *

Facebook Hacker Cup Meta Hacker Cup (formerly known as Facebook Hacker Cup) is an annual international programming competition hosted and administered by Meta Platforms. The competition began in 2011 as a means to identify top engineering talent for potential emplo ...

: Second place (2013) *

TopCoder Open Topcoder Open (TCO) was an annual design, software development, data science and competitive programming championship organized by Topcoder, and hosted in different venues around the United States. In the first two years, 2001 and 2002, the tour ...

Algorithm: Second place (2012) A more comprehensive list of achievements can be found at the Competitive Programming Hall Of Fame website.

References

External links

Online coding profiles *

Topcoder Topcoder (formerly TopCoder) is a crowdsourcing company with an open global community of designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive programmers. Topcoder pays community members for their work on the projects and sells community s ...

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Codeforces Codeforces () is a website that hosts competitive programming contests. It is maintained by a group of competitive programmers from ITMO University led by Mikhail Mirzayanov. Since 2013, Codeforces claims to surpass TopCoder in terms of active co ...

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*

CodeChef CodeChef is an online programming platform that empowers learners to master coding through structured courses, thousands of practice problems, and regular contests. It offers beginner-friendly paths in languages like Python, C++, and Java, along ...

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{{Authority control Living people 1991 births OpenAI people Carnegie Mellon University alumni Polish computer scientists Polish computer programmers University of Warsaw alumni Competitive programmers