What kinds of skills do OpenAI leaders look for in new hires?

In a recent episode of the OpenAI podcast, Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT, and Mark Chen, chief research officer, discussed their hiring philosophy. Interestingly, the focus isn’t on candidates with an Ivy League background or those who’ve made AI breakthroughs. Instead, they prioritize intrinsic qualities, such as curiosity, agency, and adaptability.

Turley noted the challenges of hiring, particularly when aiming to maintain a small, exceptional, and humble team capable of quick adaptation. “I think curiosity has been the number one thing that I’ve looked for,” Turley shared, advising students to cultivate this trait in an ever-evolving world.

Turley emphasized that AI research is still in its early stages, suggesting that a “certain amount of humility” is crucial when developing the technology.

He explained that building AI is less about knowing the right answers and more about knowing how to ask the right questions with an innate curiosity.

Turley looks for new hires who are “deeply curious” about the world and what OpenAI does.

Chen agreed with Turley and added that he looks for agency in new hires, or the ability to find problems and fix them with little oversight. He also searches for adaptability, or a willingness to adjust to a fast-changing environment.

“You need to be able to quickly figure out what’s important and pivot to what you need to do,” Chen stated.

Chen noted that agency and adaptability were more important than having a Ph.D in AI. He said that he himself joined OpenAI in 2018 as a resident without much formal AI training.

“I think this is a field that people can pick up fairly quickly,” Chen said.

There are other skills that other executives have pinpointed as essential in the age of AI. Alexandr Wang, the MIT dropout who co-founded data training startup Scale AI and now leads Meta’s AI efforts, noted in an interview with WaitWhat media CEO Jeff Berman last year that prompt engineering was an important skill to have. He recommended studying fields like math and physics that emphasized long-term thought.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs’ chief information officer, Marco Argenti, wrote in a post last year in the Harvard Business Review that he recommended studying philosophy in addition to engineering.

OpenAI was worth $300 billion as of March, following a record-breaking $40 billion fundraising round, the biggest tech funding round on record from a private company.