OpenAI's Yann Dubois: Why AI Progress Suddenly Feels Real

The MAD Podcast with Matt Turck · Beginner ·📰 AI News & Updates ·2h ago
AI suddenly feels like it has crossed a threshold, and Yann Dubois, co-lead of the Post-training Frontiers team at OpenAI, joins Matt Turck to explain why. Yann’s team has led the post-training behind the company's reasoning models, including the recent GPT-5.5 release. In this conversation, we go inside the shift from raw model capability to useful, reliable systems: what changed with GPT-5.5, why reinforcement learning is moving beyond math and coding competitions into messy real-world work, how reasoning models like GPT-5.5 actually work, the difference between GPT-5.5 Thinking and GPT-5.5 Pro, why post-training has become one of the most important frontiers in AI, and why evals, model-as-judge, hallucinations, agentic workflows, GDPval, and continual learning are now central to the next phase of frontier models. Yann also shares why continual learning remains one of AI's biggest unsolved problems three years after ChatGPT, and where startups still have massive room to build as frontier models race ahead. Yann Dubois LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/duboisyann X/Twitter - https://x.com/yanndubs OpenAI Website - https://www.openai.com X/Twitter - https://x.com/OpenAI Matt Turck (Managing Director) Blog - https://mattturck.com LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/ X/Twitter - https://x.com/mattturck FirstMark Website - https://firstmark.com X/Twitter - https://x.com/FirstMarkCap Listen on: Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7yLATDSaFvgJG80ACcRJtq Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mad-podcast-with-matt-turck/id1686238724 00:00 - Cold open 00:34 - Intro 01:30 - Why recent AI progress feels like a step function 04:13 - Model reliability & the rollercoaster of shipping 5.5 07:33 - How OpenAI structures vertical and horizontal teams 09:49 - Improving model efficiency and test-time compute 12:32 - Yann Dubois' journey from Switzerland to OpenAI 15:37 - Reasoning in 2026: Real-world utility vs verifiable rewards 18:34 - GPT-5.5 Thi
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Chapters (9)

Cold open
0:34 Intro
1:30 Why recent AI progress feels like a step function
4:13 Model reliability & the rollercoaster of shipping 5.5
7:33 How OpenAI structures vertical and horizontal teams
9:49 Improving model efficiency and test-time compute
12:32 Yann Dubois' journey from Switzerland to OpenAI
15:37 Reasoning in 2026: Real-world utility vs verifiable rewards
18:34 GPT-5.5 Thi
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