About the Talk:

In this exciting presentation, we get to learn from Ahmed El-Kishky, Hongyu Ren, and Giambattista Parascandolo, members of the research team at OpenAI who introduced OpenAI o1, a new large language model designed to excel in complex reasoning. Attendees will gain insights into how this model leverages a "chain of thought" process to think through problems, representing a significant leap forward in AI's ability to perform deep, structured reasoning.

Throughout the session, Ahmed, Hongyu, and Giambattista will explain how OpenAI o1 ranks among the top performers in competitive programming challenges, surpasses human PhD-level accuracy in scientific benchmarks, and continues to improve with each iteration. They will also discuss the ongoing efforts to make this model more accessible for real-world applications, with an early preview version now available in ChatGPT and to select API users.

Key topics covered include model evaluations, the role of reasoning in enhancing safety and alignment, and the impact of hiding the chain of thought to optimize user experience. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in an interactive Q&A with the speakers, where they can explore how OpenAI o1’s reasoning capabilities can unlock new AI use cases in science, coding, and beyond.

This engaging dialogue offers inspiration and actionable strategies for anyone looking to harness advanced reasoning in AI, providing a forward-looking perspective on the future of AI-driven problem-solving.

Read the blog post, Learning to Reason with LLMs here.

About the Speakers:

Ahmed El-Kishky is a Research Scientist at OpenAI, where he focuses on developing advanced language models and enhancing AI reasoning through reinforcement learning techniques. He played a pivotal role in the creation of OpenAI o1, a model designed to tackle complex problem-solving. Ahmed holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with his research specializing in scalable machine learning algorithms and large-scale text analysis.

Hongyu Ren is a Research Scientist at OpenAI, specializing in machine learning and artificial intelligence with a focus on enhancing language model reasoning and generalization capabilities. He has contributed significantly to the development of OpenAI o1, helping advance the model’s ability to solve complex tasks through structured thought processes. Hongyu holds a PhD from Stanford University, where his research centered on graph representation learning and its applications in natural language processing.

Giambattista "Gb" Parascandolo leads a research team at OpenAI, where he focuses on reinforcement learning and complex reasoning. He has been instrumental in the development and scaling of OpenAI o1, and set some of the foundations for reasoning in LLMs. Giambattista holds a PhD in computer science from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and ETH Zurich, where his research explored out of distribution generalization in deep learning.