McLaughlin: Continuous AI progress can feel weirdly discontinuous to outside users
Aidan McLaughlin · Aidan McLaughlin (OpenAI) On ChatGPT, model welfare, and path to AGI · Apr 6, 2025 · at 3:15
Aidan McLaughlin, OpenAI model design researcher, explains how discontinuous jumps in consumer-facing model capability like GPT-4o image generation drive viral adoption.
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“Even things that are continuous to us, right. Like, you know, as people that use these tools often still are sometimes weirdly discontinuous to like outsiders. Right. Or to let people that aren't as new to the product. But like, you know four O image gen is like a great example of that. Right. Like we went from like Dolly to this and it was like this massive jump. And I think that like that jump does add to the virality, as you said.”
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