OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has credited Indian prodigy Prafulla Dhariwal for the successful launch of the company’s latest flagship AI model, GPT-4o. Altman announced on X (previously known as Twitter) that ChatGPT 4o would not have been possible without Dhariwal. But, who is he?
Dhariwal, a native of Pune, has long been recognised for his academic and scientific achievements. His early promise was evident when he won the National Talent Search Scholarship from the Government of India in 2009. That same year, he clinched a gold medal at the International Astronomy Olympiad held in China. His streak of excellence continued with gold medals at both the International Mathematical Olympiad in 2012 and the International Physics Olympiad in 2013.
Dhariwal’s has had a good academic record as well. This includes an impressive score of 295 out of 300 in the physics-chemistry-mathematics (PCM) group during his Class XII examinations. He also excelled in entrance exams, scoring 190 in the Maharashtra Technical Common Entrance Test (MT-CET) and an outstanding 330 out of 360 in the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE-Mains).
In recognition of his scholastic prowess, Dhariwal was awarded the annual Abasaheb Naravane memorial prize in 2013, an honor presented by the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE).
Dhariwal went on to pursue a Bachelor's in Computer Science (Mathematics) at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he graduated in 2017 with a GPA of 5.0/5.0. His journey with OpenAI began in May 2016 as a research intern. Over the years, he has risen through the ranks to become a research scientist. Among his notable contributions are GPT-3, the revolutionary text-to-image platform DALL-E 2, the innovative music generator Jukebox, and the reversible generative model Glow.
"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.
The unveiling of GPT-4o at OpenAI's Spring Update event showcased the model's advanced capabilities in reasoning across voice, text, and vision, setting a new standard in AI technology. This marks OpenAI's first foray into natively multimodal models, a feat achieved under Dhariwal's leadership of the Omni team.
