Jakub Pachocki

{{Short description|Computer scientist (born 1991)}}

{{Use mdy dates|date = March 2025}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Jakub Pachocki

| image = Jakub Pachocki in 2012 cropped.jpg

| caption = Pachocki in 2012

| other_names = meret

| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1991}}

| birth_place = Gdańsk, Poland

| education = University of Warsaw
Carnegie Mellon University

| occupation = Chief scientist

| employer = OpenAI

}}

Jakub Pachocki (born 1991) is a computer scientist and former competitive programmer. He is best known as the chief scientist at OpenAI and for his role in overseeing development of GPT-4.{{Cite news |last=Rafieyan |first=Darius |date=October 24, 2024 |title=OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki leads AI project Strawberry |url=https://www.businessinsider.com/jakub-pachocki-openai-ai-power-list-2024 |access-date=2025-03-01 |work=Business Insider}}{{Cite web |date=May 14, 2024 |title=Ilya Sutskever to leave OpenAI, Jakub Pachocki announced as Chief Scientist |url=https://openai.com/index/jakub-pachocki-announced-as-chief-scientist/ |access-date=2025-03-01 |website=OpenAI}}{{Cite news |last=Metz |first=Cade |date=November 18, 2023 |title=The Fear and Tension That Led to Sam Altman's Ouster at OpenAI |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/technology/open-ai-sam-altman-what-happened.html |access-date=2025-03-01 |work=The New York Times}}

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called Pachocki "easily one of the greatest minds of our generation".

Background

Pachocki was born in 1991 in Gdańsk, Poland. In high school, he was a six-time finalist of the International Olympiad in Informatics.{{Cite web |last=Major |first=Małgorzata |date=2025-02-24 |title=Jakub Pachocki - Chief Scientist w OpenAI |url=https://www.wirtualnemedia.pl/artykul/jakub-pachocki-chief-scientist-w-openai |access-date=2025-03-20 |website=Wirtualnemedia |language=pl}} He won a silver medal in 2009.{{Cite web |title=Profile of Jakub Pachocki - Competitive Programming Hall Of Fame |url=https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:meret |access-date=2025-03-20 |website=cphof.org |language=en}}

Pachocki obtained his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of Warsaw. He represented his university at the International Collegiate Programming Contest with his team winning a gold medal and coming second place overall in 2012. In the same year he was also the champion of the Google Code Jam.

From 2011 to 2012, Pachocki worked at Facebook as a software engineering intern.

Pachocki attended graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University where he obtained his PhD.

Career

After graduation, Pachocki did postdoc work at Harvard University and Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing.

In 2017, Pachocki joined OpenAI. In 2021, he became OpenAI's research director where he led the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five. In May 2024, he became chief scientist after his mentor Ilya Sutskever left the company.

Competitive programming achievements

A more comprehensive list of achievements can be found at the Competitive Programming Hall Of Fame website.

References

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