Peter Deng could have retired long ago. Before Deng took over the management of ChatGPT at Open AI in May 2023, he held responsible positions at many of the large technology companies in Silicon Valley. In recent years, his employers' share prices have only known one direction: upwards. And since company shares have always been a crucial component of compensation there, Peter Deng is likely to be very wealthy even by Silicon Valley standards. At least he doesn't object to being called that in Austin at the South by Southwest (SXSW) tech conference. Deng wasn't concerned about the money when he moved to what is probably the most exciting artificial intelligence company at the moment. At least not only, because Open AI pays exorbitant salaries for developers and therefore also for their boss.
“It’s really important work,” Deng said in Austin. “I have never seen a technology as powerful as artificial intelligence. If we get it right, AI will be a blessing to humanity.” Whether all the digital products that Deng helped develop at his previous employers are a blessing to humanity is more than controversial. But they are an integral part of the everyday lives of hundreds of millions of people all over the world.
“Head of Rider” at Uber
Deng's first stop after studying at Stanford University was Google in 2006. Just a year later, he moved to Facebook, where he built Messenger, the News Feed, groups and other functions that made Facebook the largest and much criticized social network. Within the Facebook Group, which is now called Meta, Deng was head of product from 2013 to 2015 and was responsible for the then very young social media platform Instagram. He was also involved in the development of the Oculus meta computer glasses. This was followed by four years at Uber from 2017 to 2021, where Deng was “Head of Rider” responsible for the app that revolutionized the taxi industry. Before joining Open AI, Deng worked for Airtable, an online management platform.
Since Open AI made ChatGPT available to the general public free of charge 18 months ago, the world has been discussing the opportunities and risks of this technological revolution. From his work for Meta and Uber, Deng knows that despite all the benefits technology can also cause harm. Because Meta did not sufficiently protect children and young people on its platforms, Deng's former boss, Facebook founder Marc Zuckerberg, recently had to justify himself before the American Senate and publicly apologize to parents whose children had taken their own lives. Uber has transformed the taxi business in many countries around the world, but the army of Uber drivers barely earn enough to make a living.
So it's hardly surprising that Deng repeatedly emphasizes at South by Southwest how seriously he and Open AI take the dangers that AI brings with it. “We think about safety right from the development stage. “We don’t build the product first and then see how we can make it safer,” said Deng. Unlike, for example, Meta with its Large Language Model (LLM) Llama and its French competitor Mistral AI, Open AI does not rely on an open source model in which external developers can also use, further develop and copy the code.
But even the best features of ChatGPT can have negative consequences. Artificial intelligence could destroy many jobs. In Austin, graphic designers from the Convention Center demonstrated. “Save the Designers,” echoed through downtown Austin. A new company logo can be created by ChatGPT or another language model in just a few seconds. The models are trained with countless images, logos and works of art. The speed at which results improve is impressive.
“The AI is like a work colleague who is always there”
Deng was asked in Austin whether the artists whose images the AI is trained with should not be paid for this. Yes, shouted the spectators. Deng declined to comment. The individual artists could come away empty-handed despite some ongoing lawsuits. Large companies, on the other hand, have the opportunity to conclude contracts for training data with Open AI. Axel Springer Verlag, for example, did this.
Deng prefers to emphasize the advantages of ChatGPT; he himself uses AI to further develop his own products. When his wife and four children sleep, he feeds the AI questions to clarify the next steps. “ChatGPT doesn’t sleep. The AI is like a work colleague who is always there.” A work colleague who should be accessible to everyone. Deng promises that the basic version of ChatGPT will remain free. But it's not just about benefits for humanity, which Open AI was committed to, at least in the early days. Open AI wants to continue to have as many users as possible. With the large number of questions you ask, the language model should be made ever better. The companies that use the program should pay.
Deng protects his own children from the products of his former employers – although at three, five, seven and nine years old they are still small. But you can play with ChatGPT and Dall-E-3. The older ones paint and make up stories with the AI. “This strengthens their creativity and they start programming. It's so much easier today, they'll reach a much higher level than me,” said Deng, sounding a bit like Steve Jobs once did: “We have to stay curious. Try it!”
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