Catherine Olsson - Really Quick Questions with an OpenAI Engineer

Key Takeaways

hey how's it going Katherine what's up hey not much how you doing good pretty good do you mind if I ask you 67 questions yeah go for it all right let's do this cool what project are you currently working on so we just launched universe and I'm working on some of the follow-up releases we're going to do for that awesome how would you describe the culture at open AI super cool I love everyone I work with here uh very open lots of good mentorship what was it like attending MIT as an undergrad really really great uh MIT has a lot of cool sub communities they're all Super Creative you went to school at NYU do you miss New York City I did I miss my friends there um but I don't miss the weather favorite internship uh Amazon if you could repeat one experience again what would it be I'd like to go back to Japan why do you think deep learning has gotten so popular recently works really well for a lot of problems um but I think people are sort of confusing it for like the last big innovation but there's more to come what is your favorite operating system Ubuntu nice if you could spend an evening with one famous person who would it be let say Michelle Obama do you play any sports uh I do rock climbing what time do you go to sleep like midnight most adventurous thing you've ever done want skydiving what's One Source you use to stay up to date in ml uh so Jack Clark who does PR for us has this newsletter called import AI it's great programming language of choice for machine learning definitely python favorite Professor uh let's go with joshh ten and MIT name one person you really admire um also a professor F Lee she does a lot of AI and also Outreach Neuroscience stuff how are you liking the Bay Area great there's a lot of cool communities here what drives you to be an engineer uh I really like building things and especially the things that I build can help other people what's the most beautiful thing in the world H I'd say it's helping out other people even if you don't agree with them or if you're different from one another what's your favorite exercise uh I do Japanese Tao drumming favorite food uh croissant what's more fun computer science theory or implementation I think implementation but you might think differently what website do you waste time on I spent a lot of time on Facebook my friends write a lot of cool stuff there last person you emailed I emailed a candidate in robotics that I met at nips you get an all expenses paid trip to one city where do you go well to Africa so maybe Cape Town would you visit Mars not unless it was cheap what's one thing you can't live without um my bicycle what's one of your favorite genres of music Spotify tells me that I listen to a lot of ambient electronic so let's go with that what's one skill you wish you had I wish I was better at drawing what's the first thing you do when you wake up uh hit snooze what text editor do you use emac but it's not a holy I promise what open source Library do you really like uh I've been really at requests in Python recently it makes htdp super easy what's one of your favorite movies uh the original Matrix what was a hard problem you recently solved at open AI we were dealing with some weird bugs when the environments were resetting in universe so trying to figure out why that was going wrong was tough what inspired you to get into machine learning I've always been really interested in how humans think and the existence of these sort of interesting biological cognitive agents but what if you could build one yourself what was the first program you ever made um the first interesting program I ever made was to figure out how to spell your name using uh chemical element symbols whoa what's one book you really like um man uh wizard of Earth sea urw what's a big misconception about you people don't realize I was born in Australia what's one thing that excites you um excuse me the future I mean who knows how it's going to turn out best advice you've ever received um someone pointed out that I've already got a lot of the things that I want so I should stop being so stressed out about it what's the bravest thing you've ever done quitting grad school was super tough I had sort of planned a trajectory for my life and having to change that really hard what's one piece of advice you'd give yourself 10 years ago I'd say to ask for more help I kept trying to do things on my own do you spend more time on the Internet or real life definitely real life but often in front of a screen Cod do you have any pets no what's something you've learned in the past month uh what it's like to release a big project do you like spicy food sometimes what's a movie that made you cry uh the end of The Lord of the Rings if you ran the world what is one law you'd enact I think freedom of the press is great and there should be more of that do you think we'll solve intelligence in your lifetime I think we'll probably build systems as capable as humans but we won't understand how they work yet who is one person you looked up to when you were in college um looked up a lot to OD Oliva she was my mentor for my Master's thesis she was combining computer science and Neuroscience in a way that I was really inspired by what deep learning library do you use the most um I we now use cancer flow I've used Morano in the past Andrew Ang once said machine learning is like the new electricity do you agree yet but maybe in the future if you were to start from scratch today what is a Learning Resource you would use to learn machine learning start with a good book like Bishop's book but then actually try and implement the stuff yourself don't just read it and bring it out bring and cerebrally actually try it what is one career goal you have lead a big project someday what's more interesting the brain or the universe well the brain is part of the universe but I do think it's pretty interesting part if you could be a superhero who would it be a lot of people say that the thing about Batman that's cool is that he doesn't have any like superpowers or magic abilities I kind of like that what's your spirit animal uh people say that I'm you know I'm really friendly I like get along well with people so maybe my spirit animals head louse do you think one shot learning will gain momentum it kind of has to if we're going to really get somewhere with intelligence we have to be able to learn from less data would you ever go to Coachella no Instagram or Vine Instagram MacBooks or Microsoft surfaces MacBooks but I hear the surface is not bad pen or pencil pencil would you ever wear the eyewatch I'd try anything once all right Catherine that's it for my 67 questions thanks so much for answering those awesome all right take care have a good one