High School Dropout to OpenAI Researcher - Gabriel Petersson Interview (Extraordinary)

I can barely take universities seriously

that don't teach LGBT as a part of their

curriculum. Gabriel Peterson, a high

school dropout from Sweden who now works

as an AI research scientist at OpenAI,

the creators of Chad. I always thought I

was too dumb. I met a programmer once

and I was so starruck. I was sleeping on

couch pillows that I found in like the

common room. Companies just want to make

money. You show them how to make money

that you can code and they'll hire you.

I currently work at Sora where we're

building uh what advice would you give

to someone who doesn't know what they

want to do. The way I think people learn

the fastest is welcome to extraordinary

the origin stories behind extraordinary

people. I'm Cel Wen the founder of

extraordinary.com and I'm here with

Gabriel Peterson a high school dropout

from Sweden who works as an AI research

scientist at OpenAI the creators behind

chat GBT. To be a research scientist,

typically you need a PhD. But Gabriel

has been able to teach himself

mathematics and machine learning using

chatbt and now works at the world's top

AI company. Gabriel was born in the

middle of nowhere in Sweden and now is

in San Francisco, California after

getting his 01 extraordinary ability

visa. Gabriel, welcome to Extraordinary.

Thank you so much. Very happy to be

here. So Gabriel, your story is super

fascinating to me. I have a tweet over

here. It says, "Five years ago, I

dropped out of high school in Sweden to

join a startup with close to zero

experience as an engineer. Today, I'm

joining OpenAI as a research scientist

to build AGI with Sora." How did you get

here from that?

>> Yeah, it's a long story. I've always

been thinking about AI ever since I

started reading books like Super

Intelligence and Life 3.0.

>> Oh, Max Tag Mark.

>> Yeah, Max. Dude, I love that.

>> And both of them happened to be Swedish

people as well. And I was, okay, there's

there's something here. But I always

thought I was too dumb. I think I was

looking into a bit to AI like I didn't

really know programming and I was like

probably there's like a bunch of really

smart people out there that I can never

compete with and yeah I just ended up

working as an engineer for a couple

years.

>> So you dropped out of high school. How

did that happen? How did you have the

conviction to leave high school when

everyone around you from your home

country, your hometown was there?

>> I didn't really make the decision. It

just more like happened. I think yeah my

my cousin called me one day and said

hello. I just talked to this person. Uh

he's really really smart. He has this

product idea to make like part

recommendation system with AI and we

should start selling this today. He's

currently in Singapore like doing

research and yeah we're going to start

selling like we're starting like yeah

come to Stockholm as fast as possible.

And I was like dude I have this big

party tonight. I I'll come tomorrow.

[laughter] He's like no. So I just went

like took the next bus to Stockholm and

I just never returned.

>> So you you dropped out of high school.

Uh you went to this startup. What

happened? We had this idea which was

building a product recommendation system

for e-commerce stores. And at first like

none of us knew anything about startup

at all. We were completely like okay

what do we do? How do we sell? So the

first way I started selling was like

calling people up like I started with

sending cold emails didn't work very

well. I started calling people up kind

of you know people were sometimes

interested but you know I was this

random 18 year old. I had no idea what I

was doing. I was non technical. The way

we used to do selling, I used to knock

on company doors and I'd bring this like

a is it A3 like the big papers?

>> Yeah.

>> And I'd have already since before like

scrape their entire uh website train new

product recommendation systems which is

like you have a product and then you

have the recommendations under like what

products do you show to increase sales.

So I print their their old product

recommendations to the left and our new

product recommendations to the right and

I made like a hundred of these. Wow. I

don't know, have them in like a big

folder and then I went looking at the

the doors. Hey, can I talk to the

e-commerce manager, CEO? And then just

show them like, hey, this is your old

product recommendations. This is your

new product recommendations. And then

they were always like impressed. They're

like, oh [ __ ] did you do all of this?

How did you do this? This is very cool.

But then, you know, immediately they're

like, okay, but how do I go from here?

Like there's so many unknowns. Do not

worry. I always brought a script I could

paste into their console on their

website which flipped their product

recommendations with our product

recommendations. And I was like, yeah,

we are ready today. we can just go live.

That's crazy. And then they're always

like, "Okay, but how do we know that

we'll make money?" And I'm like, "Do not

worry. I have an AB test set up already

uh in this script. It will track um like

the revenue from people using your per

recommendations and our per

recommendations." So I could just like

first meeting just close them everything

ready from the start. We did all the

implementations to it which you know

would backfire hugely later because we

didn't you know we're just thinking

let's just scale or let's not think

about like being easy to scale up. Let's

just like just make sure we get

customers right

>> with like a bunch of other 17 18 year

olds who dropped out of high school.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So it was older. He was a

researcher. He was 16 or 17 at that

point. And then my cousin was like

>> And you guys were all in person in like

Stockholm, Sweden?

>> Yeah. So, I was living in my cousin's

dorm room, but we were

>> in college.

>> Yes. So, we were No, we don't have dorm

rooms. It's It's more like it's kind of

dorm rooms, but in like normal

apartments in Sweden.

>> Okay, I got it.

>> And they're super tiny.

>> Yep.

>> And you know, you can only live there if

you go to the university. But, you know,

we had to submit things like, "Oh, yeah.

We He's still doing university, right?"

And I I was sleeping on couch pillows

that I found in like the common room.

>> [laughter]

>> for one year. Nice. It was a disgusting

room. But it worked well. And we're

sitting in this like co-working space.

>> What made you keep going? Like most

people kind of quit, but you and they

would probably go back to school, but

you just you never went back. Like why

did you keep going? Why did you keep

like living in a shared dorm room on

these like community couches?

>> I think I've always had a very distorted

view of reality. Like I was 100% sure

that this would make me a billionaire.

100%. There was like no doubt in the

world and I was like super serious and

like acting just like I believed like

okay this is going to be the next big

thing like nothing else mattered. I was

like I'm just going to you know I was

working like all night all nighter after

all nighter you know I was traveling

around Stockholm trying to do sales.

>> Yeah.

>> We're doing like all these like crazy

ass things to try to get customers.

>> So you originally dropped out without

knowing how to code. How did you go

about learning that? Mostly because I

was forced to when we had to do the

integrations with [laughter]

>> Yeah. Like how did you how did you

learn? I guess you had some friends

around you who knew you had to code

better.

>> Yeah. Back then. So the the first way I

learned how to code was my cousin when I

was very young. Like at this point I was

like 13 or something but he showed me

Java and I made this super simple like

Pokemon clone like turnbased. You could

like take damage. Such a bad

application. And then it's some time

went by and then I made like a Udemy

Python course. I learned super simple

Python. I made this like really ass game

where like you had little pods coming

and you were like a duck trying to avoid

them. Um it's really dumb. And I also

did I tried to get into machine

learning. I did all these like you know

the classic like machine learning course

by Andrew and G. Yeah. I just thought

like yeah I'm probably too dumb for

this. I just can't do this stuff. Yeah.

when I really started getting into

coding was at the pit when we you know

we had to build things and we have to

make product recommendation systems

scraping integrations uh set up EB

testing and all these things.

>> Yeah, but how do you learn that if you

don't go to school?

>> The good thing with just working is that

you always have a real problem which

makes everything so simple. Like

everyone always says like if you don't

go to school how can you learn? and like

well it's so much more easy like then

you have a real problem and you know you

can map out okay I want to integrate my

product recommendation system to this

e-commerce store to do that I need to

figure out how to select the the

elements on the web page I need to

insert them correctly I need to learn

how to do all these things and then you

can take it step by step you go to stack

overflow and you know you can ask your

friends if you're stuck and yeah I think

that's like a simpler way to learning

and especially when you have all this

pressure on you right if you have a real

job you have pressure And that's

everything. Like I I could never learn

anything without pressure. There's just

no way. Like if someone were like, "Oh

yeah, learn this thing, but you have

infinite time and you'll also not make

money from it." If you were to give

advice to another high school dropout,

>> um what would it be so that they would

learn more?

>> I think I was extremely lucky. I mean, I

was living in this town called Vagid in

the middle of nowhere in Sweden. I knew

no engineers. I met a programmer once in

in in early high school and I was so

starruck. I was like, "Do you code? do

you like make web pages? That's awesome.

And when you don't have this like

culture like why is SF such a capital of

of startups? Well, because everyone's

only talking about startups and it's

like so clear how to do one. But if

you're like in the middle of nowhere and

you don't you're not like surrounded by

people this is like all they talk about.

You'll think all these things are

impossible. Uh like doing all these

things for me I was like damn this seems

so far away. And I was very lucky to to

have the pit. The pit was the first

thing where I was like oh this is a real

thing. I mean I had no options and I

probably it would be very hard to have

options because I didn't know what I was

looking for. They just came up and it

happened to be an extremely good

learning for me. For other people who

want to do the same thing like getting

into the market as fast as possible,

solving real problems, having

accountability. I mean now with help of

ship you don't even need to know you you

don't even need to have much knowledge

about the thing you're doing. If you can

just prove to the person that yeah I'm

good at asking ship what I need to know

like I'm super creative. I'm super high

agency. you know, you you show all these

things to the person hiring and then the

last thing is, oh, but you don't know

the actual thing and you be like, "Yeah,

yeah, I talk to Shachi all the time."

Like, I'm really good at like extracting

information. Like, you have all

knowledge in the world there.

>> Knowledge is not a problem anymore.

>> Yeah. Yeah, in the same way that

>> you don't have to like go to an

institution and then read up on

something as like a prerequisite course

for some potential solution or some

potential application. You can now just

go into real world, find problems like,

oh, how do I like optimize this or how

do I teach people faster or whatever

problem you want to solve? Um, and then

you can query AI like chat GPT to figure

out how you can solve it and how you can

learn the different pieces of knowledge

to solve it. The way I think people

learn the fastest is by what you would

call like a like uh um top down

approach, right? You'll probably learn

faster if you start with a problem and

then you can read about everything

required to to to start solving the

problem and then you find more problems

and you read about those and then you go

down to like the the core of the

problem, right? So you start with actual

task and you go down. But that's

extremely rare way to learn like in

school everyone has this mindset right

of like okay we need to start with the

foundations we need to start like if you

want to work with machine learning like

you can forget about doing any machine

learning for the first like four years

right it's like math and and then you

have like matrix classifications you

have linear algorithm you have all these

things that build up and then you have

the simpler ML that's like super

autoated you have like you know linear

regression all these things that are

still used partly but it's like it will

take you very long time until you get

like production grade ML

Why is this? Well, it's extremely hard

to scale the top down approach because

that requires like a teacher always

being there for you. It requires you

being able to know exactly what piece of

thing you need to learn at any point of

time. Well, if you do bottom up, you

know, okay, first you always learn this

and then you always learn this

>> and it's it's much easier to scale. It's

extremely inefficient. And now with

chatbt, all this changes like this will

change. People say education will change

all the time, but I can barely take

universities seriously that don't teach

LGBT as a part of their curriculum. It's

like actually insane that this is not

like a a course that's taught from like

2 years old. Like suddenly foundational

knowledge universities don't have like

um a monopoly on on on foundational

knowledge anymore. You can just get any

foundational knowledge from from ship

and pe people haven't really

internalized how top down problem

solving works. They will always tell you

things you know like oh but you'll never

actually understand the problem. you'll

never actually blah blah blah. And this

is not true. You start with a problem,

you recursively go down. Like if I want

to learn machine learning, I ask okay

what project should I do? Write the

project for me. I have bugs. I start

fixing the bugs and then things work and

from there um I start with a specific

part of the machine learning problem

like okay uh what happens here? Can you

explain to me with intuition why this

module here makes the model learn? And

it will explain to you and then it say

oh it uses matrix multiplication and

linear algebra you know okay how do they

work? what's the math intuition behind

this? Like show me like make up a couple

graphs to really make me get an

intuition for this part of ML. And then

suddenly you have all the foundational

knowledge like it doesn't need to go

bottom up anymore. Yeah.

>> And this shift will will Yeah, I think

this shift will like fundamentally

change how education is done.

>> What are schools not teaching you about

AI?

>> First of all, the perception of AI is

completely wrong in schools. Shivbt came

naturally students were like, "Oh, nice.

Something can do all the work for me."

And that's all they thought about which

makes sense. That that's the first thing

I would apply to as well. And the first

thing the the teachers think about is oh

no everyone will just use AI to do

works. We need to ban AI and AI is bad.

And that becomes like a reinforcing

circle of like students perception of AI

is like okay I can use this to cheat.

And teachers perception is like okay

just use this as a cheat. Like it's

really hard to build up an intuition of

how to learn from AI. It doesn't come

very naturally. Now it's like I'm

extremely happy when I talk to like my

friends back in Sweden. They go to

university and they're like, "Oh, I

realized I can use shipb to like give me

quizzes." Like I give it all the

previous questions and I ask it like,

"Okay, tell me tell me some fundamental

things that all of these different

questions share so I can really learn

what they try to teach me or like

generate 10 new questions, right?" And

you know, people are starting to learn

how to use AI. The teachers are still

very very anti AI, which makes no sense.

Like if the teachers just switch the

narrative to okay, here's how you learn

efficiently. Like if a student want to

cheat at tests, I mean they'll find find

ways to do that either way. And if

they're never taught that, you know, you

can actually use this to to learn

things. I mean,

>> I'd also used to cheat like

>> Yeah. Yeah. There's just no concept of

that.

>> Yeah.

>> So, how do you use AI to learn? How did

you use AI to self teach yourself math

and machine learning to now work at

OpenAI? I did a very similar thing to

what I was describing before. So I

currently work at Sora where we're

building uh these video models at OpenAI

and I wanted to learn things like you

know the basics of of of image models.

So I asked JP hey what are the the most

fundamental concepts of of like [snorts]

video and and image models in AI and

they started talking about okay we we

had these things called autoenccoders we

have these things called diffusion

models and I was like yeah that that

sounds interesting I've heard about this

everywhere that's very cool. now you

know write all the code for diffusion

model and it writes all the code and I

have no idea what's going on right okay

here's a bunch of code holy [ __ ] and

then then you try to get it working you

debug it together you tell it what's

wrong and then you start to build up

intuition of like okay this happens here

this happens here this happens here and

then you continue to just understand in

detail what every single line of code

does right so you're like okay what does

this part do what does this part do so

for example for for diffusion model for

example uh you could take a part like

part for example called uh a restn net

for example

is resonant blocks and they uh do a

bunch of transformation and and and and

then they also have a residual uh which

is basically like you you let data pass

through in a certain way which makes the

model learn more easy right and at the

start I have no idea how this is done

right and you start asking ch follow-ups

follow-ups and it will tell you

something like what I just told you but

you still have a huge question mark

>> like what is this what does this mean

like what do you mean it learns more

efficiently and what what do you do then

well follow up and you'll be like, well,

h how does it learn more efficiently

because it's doing this? You like, oh

yeah, the the gradients can flow in

these X YC different ways and in the

scenario that you wouldn't do this

thing, they would be stopped at XYZ

things, right? And you just continue to

ask the model constantly until you

really understand. And when you

understand, you can just tell the model,

okay, this is my understanding of this.

Is this completely correct? And then you

you'll also start learning about all

these like small tricks you can do,

right? like explain this concept like

I'm 12 years old. That one is really

good. It will, you know, it will start

like super easily like imagine you're in

a bookstore and you can imagine the

embeddings being the different books in

the store and then you can imagine you

know all this and it will connect

everything that has to do with AI to

like real world concepts which makes it

really easy to to reason about for for

someone like like me. So it sounds like

any sort of topic you can learn now and

all you need is chatbt and you start

with just asking like hey what are like

the preliminary things I need to uh you

know understand about this and then you

might pull on one of those threads right

for like when you were investigating

video models you're like okay image

generation models or like diffusion

models like stable diffusion and you're

like okay how the how the freick does a

diffusion model work and then you would

have it um explain it to you maybe

generate code samples But every aspect

of that you would then inquire further

like I don't understand this part. What

what is this? Why is this adopted to

this model architecture? Oh, why is this

done this way? Okay, how does that math

work? And um I I mean I read like your

posts on on on x.com which are very

popular. Um, and it it looks like you're

just able to use AI in a way where you

continuously query until you have full

understanding. And then when you do have

full understanding, you almost like

reexplain similar to how Fineman the

best way to learn is to to explain

things. But now you can do it with AI,

right? And so when you're learning about

diffusion models after going through a

deep dive on some like very technical

topic where you might not even know what

gradients are, right? And then you it'll

explain you calculus or some linear

algebra and you pick that up. Um but

then you would explain back to the model

and then it will then clarify or like

see different aspects that you don't

understand and you keep repeating that

until you have a very strong grasp.

>> I see it a bit as like recursive gap

filling. If I would like summarize it in

one word, it's like you need like the

skill that's required here is knowing

what gaps you have in your knowledge.

like say you have an AI model or like

whatever else you want to learn and

understanding when you don't really

understand the part it's actually pretty

hard to do like it's something you need

to train up and practice on yourself

like wait a second do I really

understand this part and then so that's

one signal you need the second signal is

when you start asking questions you need

to have a really strong signal for when

it clicks when you're like ah there it

clicked

>> okay just understand like fundamentally

why this thing is as it is

>> how would someone else learn how to

learn with AI

>> this is a very good question I mean

first of all just change like the

misconception of AI being used to do the

work for you to instead you know use the

AI to explicitly help you learn like you

you don't you don't just use it to get

work done you actually learn from it I

mean the moment you just switch that

mindset which seems still fairly

uncommon but is becoming more and more

common all the time you have most of the

things to to get there right and and

then to become really good first of all

like I said like know when you have gaps

in your knowledge understand what it

feels like when you fundamentally grasp

something and you know you you you'll

constantly come up with all these hacks

like uh you you'll notice

will respond in a fairly standard way

and your way of learning is probably not

exactly what it responds like because it

wants to you know make sure everyone has

a good experience

>> but you probably want it to respond in

another way. I very often tell it for

example be extremely direct and

concrete. Always show me all the

intermediate states and the shapes of

the code you produce. make sure to to

make sure I have like a really intuitive

understanding of why it happens. And if

you're unsure, make sure you show me

options and like what others have tried

and why this works and why something

else didn't work. And you start becoming

good at like asking these questions that

give you the aha moment like as fast as

possible. You want to get to the aha

moment. Yeah. Like the first time you

understood linear algebra or the first

time you understood what back

propagation works, you probably had a

very clear like, oh wow, it finally

clicked. and to chase these clicks and

to make them appear like as frequent as

possible, right? That's like kind of

your utility function.

>> That's crazy. It's like in modern day in

order to stay competitive and to be like

top performing when you look at someone

like honestly they can they'll be the

top at the field pretty quickly like how

you've done it just by the rate of being

able to query for information.

>> Yeah.

>> And that's probably like the most

important skill now would you say?

>> Yeah. and and and you know building up

this like this is another very important

like build up the moment you have a

question in your head make sure to get

it into ship this one is very hard this

took me I remember my my cousin the same

cousin I started a company with he was

like um dude ship is out this is like

pre pre like the what's it called like

think of this book back in the day when

it was just like a playground was like

super early GP3 like before ship

And he was like, "Why are you not using

this yet?" Like, "You're writing code

all the time." Like, "Yeah, I'm going to

try it out." And you know, he kept on

pushing me every month. And it took me

like a year until I really started

connecting like, "Oh, I have this

problem. I need to ask ShashT." And it's

so common like you meet people all the

time. You're in a discussion and people

have all these questions or you sit

co-working with someone, they have all

these questions, you know, and you're

like, you should ask Shash. Just like

every time you have any kind of

question, anytime you need to guess

about something, just constantly ask

Shach like it's it's always there. It's

very low effort like make sure you have

a very simple way to just ask about

anything you ever wonder and you'll just

you know have all knowledge in the

world.

>> Yeah. But the important part is like

almost getting hooked on like how fast

you can get to that aha moment of

realizing or internalizing something and

the skill of being able to prompt chat

GBD not in a generic way but in a way

where it will give you very concrete um

or uh you know different analogies or

how whatever form factor that works best

with your learning style. Yeah. for you

to then understand and internalize that

>> which is really hard or I mean I think

I'm pretty dumb. So it's like [laughter]

it's like sometimes when I answer such

stuff and it explains it and I'm like I

I don't understand. I don't understand.

This is just too hard. And and you try

again. You try again and you're like,

okay. And then you really grab you're

like ah you're like, okay, [laughter]

from thing skills time, right? And and

you're like, okay, what if this these

features in the world didn't exist? And

what if that never existed? Would they

still have invented this thing and

explain it to me like I'm 12 and you

know, generate graphs showing the

distributions that I need to know to

really understand this? like you know

there's so many creative ways you can

use to to really extract the information

you need from shacht and I think a lot

of the things I've learned especially

like with previous models like sh is

becoming so much better all the time but

like like a year ago when the models

weren't as strong some of the things

I've learned is like I probably couldn't

learn them if I didn't like really know

how to extract the information like I I

could ask the question a thousand times

and make it rephrase it a thousand times

I just didn't wouldn't understand this

this is why they should teach sashi in

in like from elementary school this is

like you know a new language. This is

like you know you still need all other

things in life like creativity you know

agency and like all these other things

but like knowledge is like a completely

new era like you can't compare this with

anything else very concrete example of

this because people doesn't don't seem

to realize how like AI like how abruptly

this will change the world like

currently I'm doing a job which

traditionally everyone would agree you

need like a PhD for right there's a

bunch of people who have done it without

a PhD but like if you told someone like

five years ago like oh yeah at one of

top AI labs someone will be hired who

hasn't you know really done the thing

for a while and the only thing he had

was that he had was like he had done

like all these very cool things on other

areas but they didn't know anything

about this thing people like no that

that that's not possible right uh but we

are now in a scenario where I can do the

job traditionally only you know downward

people have done it for like multiple

years just by using chach that's insane

like the amount how fast the world will

develop with chach like you can just do

research in anything you want if you

want to start doing bio research you

want to are doing like hardware. You can

just go and do things. Um it's just

incredible.

>> Yeah,

>> this this will be like a double digit

increase in world GDP like just coming

from large language models

>> and anyone can do it as long as it

>> they know how to use chatbt.

>> Yeah, it's 20 bucks per month and you

know the thinking models are like really

really good when it comes to like coding

and like understanding things.

>> How do you use chatebt to learn as you

build out like one of the world's best

video models?

>> It's very simple. Like a lot of people

ask me this and they're always confused

like okay what you actually do right

like what do you do and you know they

imagine I don't know what they imagine

but you know something very very special

right and it's it's fairly simple you

know you look at the video and you're

like ah this part of the video doesn't

look very good so you go and you change

the architecture in the model a bit or

you change the data or something and you

know you you train the model you look at

the results you stare at videos for for

a while and you're like, "Oh, these

videos were better. That's great. This

this goes into to monster." And then you

just do that on a loop, right? You're

like, "Okay, what's the next thing that

I want to fix or the next thing I want

to try?" And that's where like AI is

really good, right? Cuz it's like, "Oh,

I have this specific problem. Hello,

AI." You know, here's my entire

codebase. Uh, tell me 10 ideas of what I

can do to improve this, right? It'll

tell you a bunch of ideas. It'll refer

to papers you can read. It'll do all

these like really great things and it

will give you like a bunch of ideas like

really good to brainstorm with and you

know you can bring all these ideas to

your colleagues and like talk to them

who are just like extremely good and

yeah it's like fairly straightforward.

>> Wow. How does it find like other

research papers to uh to suggest you to

explore?

>> He just knows about them knows.

>> Yeah. Like 4.0 just like I think even

earlier models you just print out the

links and you press the link and you're

>> and it would just work

>> because the model just memorized the

link.

>> Knows the links. uh to to like the big

papers like equivalent to smaller papers

but you can also use you know the search

function.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh you can just turn on the search while

you're speaking to it and like yeah find

some papers talking about this right.

>> Uh and then you know obviously I don't

read the papers word for word. I you

know you me too. I have my my

instructions like okay I want to you

know give me a list of things this paper

did differently because often times a

paper they take some technique that I

already know about and they introduce

some new things to it and I just ask it

okay compared to the other thing tell me

a list and be extremely concrete of

exactly what they did that compares to

the previous thing and that's a really

good summarization and often times you

know you're like ah this paper probably

wouldn't make it it's not worth trying

out and you can just go to the next one

or like ah this paper is really good

like I only read the paper in depth if I

actually decide to implement it and then

I probably will read it when if I have

bugs like I probably just like throw in

all my code and be like hey implement

this into my code [laughter] and just

copy paste it in.

>> Oh wow.

>> And you know I I I obviously make sure

to like really read through the code. I

think it's extremely important. You

can't just throw in code.

>> No, I'm I'm I'm not a vibe coder. I'm

I'm very opinionated when it comes to

code. No, it sounds like you have like

the a very different approach where like

if you actually want to build like you

know really concrete things like you

need to understand everything right

because especially if you're pushing

like a forefront of any field I mean I

want to understand all the foundations I

think the the first reaction people have

is like oh you just want to take

shortcuts you don't really want to

understand things you just think you can

slop out a bunch of AI slope right and I

think this is the correct route like I I

want to take shortcuts that's for sure

but I want to take shortcuts to

understand all the foundations

>> and that's very important distin Like it

seems like either you're on the camp

like okay AI slope do all the work for

me I never want to work or you're in the

camp you need to go to college they have

a monopoly on all the foundational

knowledge you need to have this taught

by a professor and I'm probably

somewhere in between right I mean you

need all these things and you know AI is

great like you should use it for

everything you should use it to

understand everything yeah

>> and train its like human AI symbiosis in

terms of like just enhancing your brain

and enhancing your ability so you're in

Stockholm you left your first startup

and how did you find your way to San

Francisco? What did you do?

>> Yeah, I always knew wanted to continue

to work in startups and always had my

sights on San Francisco cuz you know all

the best people I knew had moved here.

All the you know all the best companies

people were talking about were here and

I noticed that like probably I should

just like super optimize for learning as

fast as possible. This was sadly pre-

chat. Like just imagine where I would be

now if I had chatt when starting to

learn things.

>> A billionaire.

>> Yeah. And and like back then the best

thing you could do was to work with the

very best people. So that's what I try

to do. And so so how do you work with

the best people? Well, you talk to as

many companies as possible. You make

sure you know you you interview the

person interviewing you, right? Like

what have you done? Like do you do do

you guys do pull requests? Do you make

sure to really review my PR so I

actually know what mistakes I do? Um,

and I managed to join a couple companies

with like really really talented

engineers. Um, I also made sure to to be

like I generally worked as a contractor.

Like the biggest mistakes people do is

that they stay with the same company for

way too long early in their careers.

That's like by far the biggest mistake I

see in people's careers. So it sounds

like a year after dropping out of high

school, you know, after your first

company, you just kept finding the best

teams or the best engineers or the best

people that you thought, you know, you

could work with and you work with them

for a bit. You learn what it could and

then you kept finding new opportunities

or like better teams and you

>> Yeah, I used to only take contract roles

to make sure that like that I could be

very mobile in the places I work with.

You try to find the best places to work

with with the best people. You try to

work as closely with them as possible.

Make sure you're opinionated about what

you're working with so you don't only

get to do like the tasks no one else

wants to do because then you're not

learning. Make sure you really show

appreciation for the people reviewing

your code because that's the best source

of

>> getting feedback.

>> Getting feedback in general and you know

hunt feedback. I mean tell people hey I

really like your review. Can you just

review every single feedback of mine?

People be like shocked like oh wow I

never heard someone liking feedback

before. This is Yeah.

>> Yeah. That's rare because people usually

shy away because they already did their

schooling and now they're working. But

>> yeah,

>> as a young person with like no really

accolades, you're like the middle of

you're nobody um with no degree.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. You the way for you to learn is

like join the best teams and then be

very nimble but also just relentlessly

seek feedback it seems.

>> Yeah. And you know call them up. Call

them up and be like hey that was a great

review. Now let's go through all the

comments together on a call. Right. You

learn so much and you just like ask

follow-up questions like what's the

intuition? Like there's like becoming a

really good engineer is extremely hard.

It's like such a wide area. Like so many

like first principles things and

intuitions you need to understand and

they're pretty easy while you know them,

but they can be very hard to learn learn

and to have someone just straight up

tell them to you and you being good at

like picking them up. It's like such a

such a

>> in the same way that whereas long before

you know you only can do that from maybe

like an existing engineer or maybe a

teacher but now you also have AI who can

do that the AI

>> now you can do this on demand at any

company you can start it could be like 4

a.m. and you've been up coding or making

something or like writing a paper or

researching something and you can still

ask AI for feedback

>> and explain you why was this why is this

a better decision.

>> I do this all the time. I I think like

when you found something in life that

works really well, you should exploit it

like to the maximum. Like ask a 100

questions per day, right?

>> Yeah.

>> Uh like I always have tabs open with I

write code, throw it in there and I'm

like is this good? Is this good? This is

good. Are there any bugs? What can I do

better? You know, why not? I mean it

probably tell you, oh yeah, it looks

fine right now. But sometimes like oh

yeah, there is a bug or oh yeah, you can

do it in this way instead. That's

simpler, right? You just constantly

learn.

>> Yeah. And if you're doing it like

literally a hundred times a day, that's

like a hundred well thoughtout questions

or follow-up questions and

>> you're just able to outpace 99.9% of

people in the world.

>> Yeah.

>> As a high school dropout.

>> Yeah. And it should be added like I

think there is still so much valuable

advice to be be had from humans. there's

like still, you know, uh when when it

comes to like opinions and and things

like if you imagine about how how how

how models are trained, they train on

all data on the internet and there's a

bunch of different opinions and you know

sometimes you might have weird opinions,

right? I mean there's still a lot of

value in working with like the really

best people.

>> Yep.

>> But you can get like 95% of that now

which is the so work with the best

people, get feedback from them, but also

constantly query AI wherever you go to

build very deep understandings of any

problem you want to solve and any

concept you want to learn. Yeah, you

were learning from these senior

engineers. You're contracting at

different companies like different YC

companies or like different all these

different opportunities. Um, how did you

end up coming to America if you didn't

go to school, if you didn't have a high

school diploma?

>> Yeah, it started out with joining a

company called Dataland. We're doing

kind of like a air table but way more

performant and like developer first and

and uh yeah a scalable air table you

could say and that was a very important

decision. I I was working there with

with an engineer is extremely talented

and he just loved teach people and he'd

love having perfect code which is

perfect for me because you know I write

code and he'd just do like a hundred

comments per PR.

>> Wow.

>> And you call him anytime like hey what

do you think like this? and he would be

really good at like explaining the first

principles reasons for why some code was

written in a certain way. And at some

point, you know, I was working remotely

from Sweden and they were in in New York

and I was like, "Yeah, I really want to

go to the US." And I think this is where

I first wanted to go to the US. This

ended up not happening because the

company pivoted and uh something like

something else. I decided to leave. That

was like my first like I started a

process there something called a J1 visa

which is more like a you could say like

an internship visa cuz we were all

pretty sure like yeah I can't get an O1

visa there's like no way and it's you

know you either need to win the Nobel

Prize or you need like all these random

things. I was like, "Yeah, there's no

way." Like, "H how could I do this?" And

then I ended up spending a lot of time

trying to figure out what I wanted to do

next. And this is where the like when

when I went to San Francisco and I was

here on Esta Visa for a couple months

just talking to people trying to figure

out like okay, what what people do here

like [snorts] what schools companies and

then I ended up joining Mid Journey.

After joining Mid Journey, I was like

yeah okay now I maybe can do O1 and and

turns out the O1 visa there's like so

many creative ways you can get an O1

visa. Very many creative ways. For

example, one thing we used for my own

visa was my Stack Overflow posts. I

remember my cousin telling me, "Oh,

you're wasting your time answering a

bunch of Stack Overflow questions." I

was like, "You don't know, maybe it's

helpful at some point." And turns out

Stack Overflow posts can be counted as

Yeah, here we have it. Even here's my

post about it.

>> So, you can use Stack Overflow post to

get the academic publishing criteria for

your O1,

>> which is legitimate. Like, I I have like

millions and millions of of of views. A

lot of like peers will review your your

posts. They're very strict. They will

downvote and remove anything that's not

true. And if you get up votes, you

you're helping a bunch of people, which

was the criteria, like have you helped

people?

>> I think like with GitHub or like Stack

Overflow is definitely a very um

creative way to argue for your 01. And

so how did you MidJourney is

one of the biggest and best is the best

AI image generation company. How did you

end up working there? Yeah, it was kind

of interesting. I mean, it's extremely

hard to deterministically go somewhere

in your career and kind of what you want

to do. It's, you know, very cliche what

everyone's saying, right? But it's like

you want to have like a bunch of small

chances everywhere, right? You just want

to go wide. You know, you want to post

things that you've done. You want to

make sure you have really good demos.

You want to reach out as many people as

possible like go to events and like ask

people for intros and make sure they do

the intro at the event, you know, really

for like, okay, oh, you want to intro

me? Well, yeah, let's do it right now.

you know, [laughter]

>> buys action so that it actually happens.

>> You make sure the results is a very high

agency move.

>> Um,

>> and also be very clear with how you can

give them value and make sure they

understand that you're not a nobody,

right? I was a nobody, but the moment

you show anything at all, like, oh, I

made this, like something I made, for

example, is this thing called fast grid.

It's like a really performant web table

and you just show you know anytime you

talk to someone that that you think is

relevant that can help you you know make

sure you you show them that you're

relevant right oh I built this really

cool thing you should see it and they're

always like oh wow this is really cool

and now suddenly you know they have a

bunch of friends that start startups for

example and now they want to interview

you to them because they have seen that

you know things like everyone wants to

help you if you first can make sure you

know that that that you can show them

because they can gain a bunch of like

you know social value from, you know,

>> doing an intro. Oh, you hired someone. I

introduced you,

>> right? And they're a good hire. If you

are a nobody, if you are from the middle

of nowhere, like how you know, you are

from the middle of nowhere in Sweden. If

you're a nobody, how would you go about

showing your value to someone important?

The number one thing I recommend to

people is making a demo that is super

super simple. It's actually really hard

to make a good demo for a lot of

reasons. Everyone thinks it's hard

because they need to make a demo that is

hard and they don't have the skills.

This is very not true. You can make very

simple like you don't need that many

much code knowledge to make a really

cool simp cool cool demo. The hard part

of making a demo is making sure that

people understand why you can code

within 3 seconds. You know you have like

100 like applicants for something. If

you apply with one link and they press

the link and you know you have one shot,

right? like making sure you build a

really cool demo where people understand

what they're looking at, which is really

hard, and where people understand that

you're a really good engineer, which is

really hard, but then you're there. I

mean, that's all they want to see. I

mean, companies just want to make money.

You show them how to make money, that

you can code, and they'll hire you. And

then you might say, "Oh, but they only

hire people with degrees." Well, yeah,

because literally no one has ever showed

them that they can do their work.

They're like, "Oh, I had these

internships." And the interviewer would

be like, "Okay, what did you do there?"

Oh, I streamlined pipelines and made

things 30% more efficient. And like, uh,

okay, well, that tells me literally

nothing. Okay, what what else? What have

you done? Oh, I went to Harvard. I have

the best grades. Well, I still don't

know if you can do the job, right? Oh,

but I have all this extracurricular. I

was debate champion. [laughter]

You start going on about all these

things that your parents will tell you,

people around you will tell you. Nothing

matters. The only reason it matters is

because no one can show that they can do

anything. So then they start listening

to these like proxy things. No one

generally m you know cares. Now there

are people who actually cares right. Who

are these people? The co will never

care. They will never care. They just

want to make money right which is great.

You just hey I can make money. Oh great

here's a task you know everything's

perfect. When the further away from the

co you comes the harder it becomes

because people start losing incentives

to do the best thing for the company.

And instead what comes up instead? Well

they don't want to [ __ ] up. They just

don't want to lose. So how do they hire

someone that if they are a bad hireer

they will not get any?

>> You go through conventional accolades

like they went to the top school.

>> Exactly. Oh they went to top school. How

could I know they were bad? Right. So

then the recruiter doesn't make a

mistake. Right. So that's the you know

the thing to to avoid like avoid people

who have no incentives in the company.

So generally avoid recruiters at a

company like they're not even technical.

They can't even know if you're good or

bad. They will only go on all these like

proxy signals. And that's why people say

I need a degree because you know that's

everything they say. People don't know

that you can just talk to people. You

can just go to an event with tech people

and like every single startup I know

wants to hire people who have high

agency and can learn things.

>> Yeah.

>> Literally if you're really good at using

Shibb you saw one of these people at a

random event. You went up and talked to

them and you give them some advice and

you're like yeah I'd like to can we try

working together for a week for free?

This would be super fun. like I have

these random ideas I just came up with

that I can work with with you that are,

you know, no commitment from your side,

no time from your side, just like get a

free data point if I'm good or not.

>> Yeah.

>> And 100% of them would say yes. They're

like, "Oh, great. I don't need to do

anything and I can see if you're good."

Yeah.

>> Like

>> if you're generally a person who knows

things and like not even knows things,

if if you're just a smart person who can

use Chachi, you can get a job tomorrow.

And here's where people are like, "But

it's a risk, right? I want to get into

college. I won't do all these things.

There is no risk. And you can even do it

the risk-free way. Just apply to

college. You can go to college. Yeah.

>> Apply to college. And while you're in

college, apply to jobs, right? And

there's zero risk. You just put some

extra times into applying to other jobs.

The moment you have a job, no one will

ever see your degree. Like the moment

you have one real job, like why would

you care about a degree? Like suddenly

you have done things, right? Like where

does the degree come in? Like things you

do way much harder than if you did

linear algory school, right? And this is

obviously for like people who really

want to go all in at their career. This

is, you know, obviously not the right

thing for people who I mean, I also

recommend my my friends to like, yeah,

go to college. It's an awesome time,

right? You'll have so much fun. You meet

a bunch of friends. You'll even like

learn things. I mean, it's it's it's

it's not useless the things you learn.

They just they just teach them to you in

very inefficient ways.

>> Um, and you you will meet very cool

people. You can meet way cooler people

if you went to San Francisco or just go,

you know, network with people or or work

at at companies. You'll meet so many

more interesting people. But you can

still meet interesting people at

college. Like you will get all the

things just less efficiently. So it's

all like a question about like what do

you want to do in life? I think it's

very easy to convince yourself that

college is right if you're like hyper

ambitious. Like for hyper ambitious

people I'm always like yeah you should

drop out as fast as possible. You can

still do the safe right by going there

and making sure you can continue if you

don't get a job. But if you're, you

know, really ambitious and you really

care about your career, I mean that's,

you know, the obviously the best thing

to do. I would have dropped out of high

school if uh if I couldn't get someone

to do it for me. Yeah. So, [laughter] uh

no, that's that's really awesome.

>> University in a lot of ways is in a

super controversial way, but like I see

it a bit like an adult daycare. You have

a bunch of people who needs to take a

decision about what they want to do

further on in life and you don't want to

make a decision and then an option comes

up. Especially in Sweden where you don't

even pay for college. Wow. They're like,

"Oh yeah, here you can get free money

and push making decisions further into

the future." And we also have all these

courses where you don't even need to

decide like if you want to be a lawyer,

you got to do this niche thing, but if

you don't want to be a lawyer, we have

this like uh you know, civil engineering

or or or industrial economy and all

these like courses where you don't even

need to decide what you do. You just

continue doing random things for five

more years and you just push your

decision. People love pushing decisions,

right? Yeah.

>> Like I don't want to chose what I

permanently do for life because that's

what it feels like you're doing. It's

not true, but it will feel like you're

choosing what you would permanently do

for life. If someone do something for

five years and they earn a certain

amount of money, even if they took a job

in a completely separate thing, like say

they went from being a lawyer to

marketing or something, even if they

make more money and are more happy and

everything, people will be like, "Did

you just do that? Did you just waste

five years of your life?" And you know,

it's really weird question to me. Like

they just upgraded their life

satisfaction and salary. And I mean,

maybe they even downgraded their salary,

but they're just much more happy. I

mean, it's all about being happy in the

end.

>> What advice would you give to someone

who doesn't know what they want to do

and they're like 18, maybe they're in

college or maybe they're in high school

or maybe they just graduated college.

What would you tell them?

>> This is a classic persona, right? I've

met so many people in this position.

I've been in this position. You know, I

think it started for me in like late

elementary school where I was like,

"Okay, I really want to make money or I

want to do business or, you know, I

really want to succeed in life. I'm not

really sure what that means because I

haven't seen anything at all and like I

don't even know what a startup is but I

want to succeed in life and then you

start searching online. How do I make

money? Right? And you have and you see

these like service pages and you sit and

do surveys and you're like holy [ __ ] I'm

making money online and you do all these

like you know you have no idea where to

start and no one tells you where to

start. Never just like go to college you

know wait 8 years and then you can start

doing things or wait 10 years or

whatever and it's really tough to know

what you want to do. You know, some

people are very lucky. They play

Minecraft and they, you know, they start

doing Minecraft servers and, you know,

they realize, "Holy [ __ ] I can make

money from this." And, you know, from

out of nowhere, you're running a

business and you just start thinking,

right? And then you're fine for life.

Like, now you know [laughter] how it's

done. You know, you do something, you

start making money and and and you'll

start really thinking about things from

the right perspective. I think my

suggestion would be you kind of got to

do a leap of faith and becoming a

software engineer, especially now with

CHPT and, you know, doing demos and

things that might be a good leap. You

know, start making games. The good thing

about software engineering is that you

can show all your work super easily. You

just send people links. You make a game,

you have a good story about yourself and

how why you're high agent and how you

can learn fast and maybe just screenshot

an example of how you can learn fast

from chat. I mean, hiring managers will

love this. Like, oh, this guy gets it,

right? And then you just send that to

like 500 people, right? And one of them

will be like, "Yeah, I should give you a

shot. You know, you're you're an

undiscovered talent. You'll make like 10

bucks an hour now when you're early, but

it's worth, you know, it's it's worth

our time to try out and this person will

learn a lot. They'll work with real

people like as fast as possible. Get

yourself into real context with real

problems where you make real money where

people have like real economic

incentives and from there just continue

to roll. Uh then you're fine. But it's

really hard to get there. that that

first jump of like

>> that first jump

>> from like something comfortable like

school or high school

>> uh to like okay I'm like working

somewhere or working on something there

all these like classical paths like you

have programming which is one very

classic path where you can do this

marketing is another one cuz it's very

easy as well if you want to become a

marketer how would you sell yourself

when I was 16 the first thing I would

have done is to email a bunch of people

hey I can do marketing they'll all

ignore me right why wouldn't they

respond to random you know elementary or

or high schooler, if you go into their

website and you you you know, you crop

their stuff and you do like you do free

work for them and then you post that to

them and they'll be like, "Oh, wow. This

guy just made work."

>> I mean, it's it's it's such a low bar

for what's considered work. It's a

really low bar. Like, everyone needs a

bunch of problems solved. You can just

solve one of those problems. I mean,

you're hired, right?

>> Yeah. You already did part of the job.

You prove to them,

>> hey, like you can do it. and it makes

the decision so much easier for them to

just all right here's like here's like a

contracting per hour role.

>> Yeah, let's just start there. What do

you think are the most important things

for people to work on?

>> I mean I'm extremely AGI appealed,

right? I'm like okay the only reason I

can do the job that I'm doing right now

which I love. I have so much fun. I'm

working with like really talented

people. That's because AI and like way

many more people are going to be able to

do what I'm doing right now. That means

like way faster innovation all aspects

of life like when it comes to curing

diseases or uh making you know random

experiments or like how do we you know

if someone is really interested in in

space they cannot go learn everything

and start making small rockets and maybe

they can you know join some cool rocket

company and you know there's like

unlimited possibilities the smarter the

AI gets and the like doubledigit

increase to world GDP we'll see from

this I'm extremely excited for that. I

have some uh Twitter posts here. Um

>> very controversial takes.

>> Yeah, we'll we'll go through some hot

takes of you and you can kind of go more

in depth. All right. Learning ML with my

professor 01 preview. Bounce what to

make. Code it. Debug it so it works.

Explain parts the intuition why it

works. The main intuition why explain to

me like M12 go into all details.

Learning this the other way around would

be so hard.

>> Right. Yeah. So I think my thinking here

was like because I I wanted to become

extremely good at ML and yeah this is

kind of the the the path that I

explained before of how you can learn

very fast. So you start at a problem you

can ask for which problem you should

solve and it should just give you great

problem to start with and you know you

code it with HGT try to understand the

code how it works when you understand

the code you can go into depth like for

each specific module how do you learn

that just recursively go down all the

way down and yeah I was just having a

very strong feeling I was like wow if I

had to learn this from like the math up

that'd be so hard and take so much time.

Yeah, like if you thought that, oh, I

needed all these prerexs before like,

you know, CS 406, I need to take like CS

365W or something, right? Um, like it's

it's much harder to I feel like this

just instills like the wrong type of

belief where like this is unbounded. I

should just master this coursework,

which is a prerequis.

And I like that you just

you say, "Fuck it. I can learn anything

and I can just recursively go from top

to bottom versus, oh, I can't touch that

knowledge cuz like I'm just in undergrad

and I haven't done like the

prerequisites for it." Yeah. And I think

this is a huge shift in how we think

about knowledge. And I think on ex I'm

often like very skeptical to academia,

not because academia itself is something

bad or because that's not something you

should do. I think a lot of people, you

know, they think it's super fun to go to

academia. A lot of good things comes out

of academia, like all these papers and

so on. But there are some very dangerous

takes people have in academia. One of

those things being you can only learn

foundational knowledge from, you know,

the classical ways of starting from the

bottom up. And people are so ready to

defend this that they're, you know,

ready to go to to to war for it, right?

They're like, "Oh, you're wrong. You

will never be able to understand these

things." And then I'm like, why do

people get so upset? I mean, it seems

like, you know, when someone spends a

lot of time doing something and then

being told that, oh, there's more

efficient ways to do this. I mean, their

their ego gets hurt, right?

>> Yeah. They spent 10 years doing

something

>> 10 years doing something

>> and this high school dropout comes out

of nowhere and just learns it, takes the

position.

>> And it's tough. It's really tough. And

when I write this kind of things, it it

will hurt people's feelings. And to be

honest, that's kind of the point with it

because these people gatekeep others

from getting into whatever they want to

do.

>> Yeah. Like if someone's 17 years old,

they want to learn ML and they ask all

these other people who have learned this

from before and they'll all be like,

"Yeah, you need to spend a lot of hours,

you need to, you know, do all these

classes, you need these professors at

these universities and blah blah blah

blah blah blah." And you know, it's just

not true. This is not what you need to

do. Uh or you can do it. It's fine. Even

think that sounds fun. Go for it. Uh I

mean, it's probably fun fun thing to do.

But I mean, there are simpler ways. And

if you crush the ego that is like behind

all these ideas, you know, more people

can do what I've done so Universities

don't have monopoly on foundational

knowledge anymore. Here's how I learned

the main intuitions behind diffusion

models as a high school dropout with

catchy BT. I go through like some ways

like that I described earlier of like

how you can learn it. Also describes

very well what I think about like

foundational foundational knowledge.

>> Yeah, I like I really like how it's like

they don't have the monopoly on

foundational knowledge anymore. And

pretty much what matters is do you have

agency over your own curiosity and

learning and you can pretty much learn

anything.

>> And the university wants to have a

monopoly on your learning. If you're a

professor that your entire life have

been spent, you know, talking to people

about, you know, why going to university

is so important and suddenly you don't

need it anymore, they'll do everything

in their power to to you know keep it be

that way. Like what happens if all the

smartest people start learning

themselves? Well, then the smartest

people won't go to university and this

lessens you know the status that you can

have at a university. It's very bad.

>> Their egos are challenged. Like I I

spent 10 years of education. I'm like

$400,000 in debt. I've successfully

combed my dissertation for my PhD. And

you're telling me that Gabriel Peterson

over here says, "I'm currently doing a

job traditionally only done by PhDs with

zero ML or math experience with the help

of Chat GBT IDK. What other proof that

chat GBT is at PhD level that we need?"

Yeah, that's a pretty good pose. Like to

be clear, I mean the people who who are

professors who have done PhDs, they've

done an incredible job, right? I mean,

they've done super cool things for the

world, they've, you know, done done

research about like very important

things and I don't think at all of these

people like it might sound like I'm I'm

I'm talking down on these people and

that's not true at all. The only thing

I'm talking down about is these concepts

that come with the old types of

thinking. It takes three days to learn

diffusion models top down. Six years

before you can learn it bottom up.

That's like the perfect analogy there.

>> Exactly. Like if you want to learn

diffusion models after university, it's

like at least six years of, you know,

>> schooling before you even encounter it.

You're like, okay, I need to do calc 1,

calc 2, linear algebra. Um, and then you

introduction to machine learning.

>> And this is the problem like how do you

even know that you like doing diffusion

models six years ago? I mean, this is

the problem with with with with

universities. if you can try out

different jobs faster and you don't need

to commit to something. Like I know so

many people that are like, "Oh, AI

sounds cool, so I'm going to take this

course." And they have no idea what an

AI is until they're like 3 years in,

which is insane. Like, should it really

take three years until you know what you

chose to to do the rest of your life and

spending

>> like, "Oh [ __ ] maybe I wanted to learn

something else." But you could have just

learned it far faster if you yourself

had felt more agency. It's like

literally just like can you do you think

you can learn diffusion models in three

day and even if you want to go to

university because I mean going to

university seems to be a great

experience like what do I know but it

seems to be super fun and even if you

want to do that you can still go to

learn all these things before you know

go straight to the end and see how it is

and see what it means and just know like

oh this actually sounds interesting I'm

ready to learn this right and that's

great then you've made a a very well

positioned you know you've made a very

good decision you know that you'll have

a lot of funing college, you know that

you learn something that's fun. I mean,

then you've done a a great decision.

>> I love it when people are able to learn

something far faster in time frames that

other people just cannot believe.

They're so used to like, "Oh [ __ ] I've

like spent so much time trying to pick

it up." And like, you know, you're like

a living example of just being able to

do this. And you can do this constantly

if you just believe you can learn

something really fast and you're willing

to just like keep asking questions like

how you know you laid it out. Like, holy

cow, like you learn anything.

>> Yeah.

>> And you can be working at the top AI lab

in the world like you are.

>> It's crazy how simple it is. It's like

in the end it's just like companies

wants to have people who can do cool

things. Show them that you can do cool

things. That's like like remove all

advice you've ever received about

finding a job and just start from that

very simple truth because that's all

there is to it. And then people try to

add, you know, things on top of this.

Yeah. Just start from there. That leads

me to one of your tweets. Uh companies

just want to make money. So, all you

need to do is show them how you can help

them make money. Drop everything you

ever have been told about getting a job

and start from that simple statement.

>> I think people are severely misaligned

sometimes when giving advice. If you've

done 5 years of college and you're happy

with it and you're like, "Oh, yeah. I I

learned good things." And now someone

comes and and and asks you, "Hello, uh,

I want to have a very good career. What

should I do?" and this other person that

has chosen you know the path that

basically everyone else choses who want

to do like for example software

engineering and they'll also be like

yeah I genuinely think you should do you

know spend this 5 years doing this thing

in university and I mean they they they

share no incentives with you they are

well intended they want the best for you

but their take is completely meaningless

it doesn't mean anything this person has

no life experience this person has done

one thing haven't compared it to

anything else and even if they tried

they probably mentally can't do

because they're locked into, you know,

oh, I I did this 5year thing and and and

did I just waste that time? No, that

can't be true. This must be the right

thing, right? I mean, your opinions

nearly always comes after incentives.

So, I generally recommended people to

discard most advice. That's how I

dropped out of high school cuz I

discarded advice. I just never trusted

people to I've always been like, yeah,

people want the best for me or they

really think they want the best for me

and they think they're helping, but you

know, most people will give you advice

that doesn't help. Like as in my example

like if you ask someone who's done a

college and has never really thought

about their career and they'll just tell

you the same thing and they'll have very

good intentions but you know it's

actually like a reverse data point like

it doesn't mean anything.

>> How did you deal with counter advice?

How did you deal with maybe were your

parents supportive when you dropped out?

>> This is very interesting. This is

something I've realized later in life

and I think a lot of people will be like

oh wow you know there's two types of

parents or it's more like a grayscale.

Uh my parents never were never really

like, "Oh, you should get good grades in

school." They were just like, "Oh, as

long as you have an okay grade, like uh

from a scale A to F, you get an E,

right? If I get E or more, they'll be

happy." And that's like all opinions

they ever had on my career. He never had

another opinion. And I was angry. I was

like, why do they not care? Like why

can't they like force me? Like why can't

they push me harder to do things? Like I

have really bad discipline, but I want

to do all these cool things. Why can't

they push me harder? And turns out

there's like this grayscale of parents.

And my parents were at the very end of

one of the sides. And that end is like

how much ego you have attached to to

your children, right? Like how you know

parents on the other side, they have

really strong egos attached to their

children. And these are often parents

that like maybe they didn't succeed with

the things they wanted to succeed with

as children and now they're trying to

live out their dreams like through their

children. Like you're going to be a

doctor, you're going to be a lawyer,

like this was my dream. This should be

your dream. like I love you as long as

you do these things because that's what

I would have done, right? And you know

they genuinely mean the best for you.

Like they convince themselves that like

yeah I really want this for you because

I really care. But often it's you know

very egoinduced like oh I want my kid to

do this so I can you know tell all my

neighbors or or friends about what my

kid can do. So you have this like two

very um and and everyone is like

somewhere in the middle of the scale. It

seems like in Sweden it seems much more

common to be very far down on the scale.

Very few parents in Sweden will care

about your degrees.

>> Yeah. Because it's free. Yeah. That's

one part.

>> Yeah. Because it's because it's free.

That's one part. And also I think people

don't have their like parents doesn't

have uh as much ego attached on average.

Then there's, you know, always people

who who really have this as well. But

yeah, I think it really differs from

different cultures. And you know now

when I know how this works you know I'm

I'm very happy over like the the

childhood I had where I could you know

experiment and do whatever I wanted to

and you know I just got support for

whatever I did. Obviously they were a

bit surprised. What you going to drop

for high school? I mean my dad was like

pretty like oh no no no this is bad you

know.

>> Um but they got over it very fast and

now you know it's nothing weird.

>> I'm glad that's that's pretty good. I

think like most people might not have

that experience. is how do you decide

where to take advice from?

>> There's very few people I take advice

from. Very very few. I mean, I can count

them on one hand probably. My cousin and

I happen to be very similar people in

how we think. And he also happens to be

many years older than than me. So, you

know, he went through college. I mean,

he used to be a good reason where he was

like, "Yeah, I went through college. You

and me think super similarly. We want

the exact same things and you'll just

waste your time." Like, that was a big

part of the trust way. I was like,

"Okay, you know, we think super similar

about things." and he kind of like

shortcuted a lot of things that he had

to go through and spend years doing that

wasn't worth it for him and I could kind

of just like follow his footsteps

immediately. And yeah, he he's one of

the people I I take a lot of advice from

and that I based a lot of my opinions on

early especially if you aren't

established yet. You don't really have a

track record. You're young. You're

unproven.

>> Yeah. And like how do you how do you go

about like finding advice or mentorship

or where to trust or where to learn from

and like what what do you do like h how

do you go about that? How do you go

about figuring yourself out?

>> I think it's so easy to get stuck as

like a very ambitious 16-year-old and

like like first of all like watching

motivational speeches on YouTube, right?

all these people like, "Oh, I made

millions and I did la and it's, you

know, just all slop and you know, you

know, you you you get this feeling after

you watched it like, oh, I just saw

something. I saw a secret and now I have

this like, you know, I feel good. I feel

motivated, right? You feel motivated,

right?" And you think you're you're

like, "Yes, now I'm going to be

motivated forever." And then you wake up

the next day and it's all gone, right?

And

um yeah, these videos are, you know,

they're they're traps for for motivated

people to, you know, fall into and feel

motivated while you're doing nothing,

right? And it's the same with like, you

know, people have this mega focus on

like good habits and, you know, uh

reading and you know, all these things

that people say are like extremely good

for you. I mean, they are really good

for you. I mean, reading is great,

working out is great, having good habits

is great. None of these matter if you

don't do it while you're doing something

that matters, right? And what matters?

Well, you don't know yet because you're

young and you've also, you know, you

have no data points on what matters, but

you should start trying. And literally

the number one way is to do real work,

solve real problems. There is millions

of startups out there who would happily

have someone work for free for you. You

just need to reach out to them. Go to

LinkedIn, find stealth founders. I mean,

send a message to all of them. Be like,

"Hey, I want to try working with you.

Let's try working this weekend or

something. And I'm ready to do whatever.

I know I can do good things and you know

I can just start working with really

simple things for you. I mean just get

your first real experience as fast as

possible. That's all it's about. Like

everything I ever did in my life that

was not towards getting real

experiences. For example, you know, when

I spent a bunch of time in elementary

school and high school reading books,

getting good habits, waking up early and

you know taking a run and I felt so

productive. None of it mattered at all

whatsoever. like it means zero if you're

not actually you know doing something

that matters at the same time yeah

>> which is nearly always work maybe it's

something else for you I mean you you

need to explore this for yourself but

for me and for very many others who

think alike it's you know get your first

job as fast as possible which is very

tough requires a lot of work but that's

where your eyes should be at 70% of

people are in permanent light suffering

because they are allergic to making any

mentally tough decisions when there is

also an option to do nothing.

>> Yeah, this is a very good post. This

summarizes I think why you know if

people read this post, understood it and

acted on it. I think like the the

happiness level in the world would rise

by like 20% or something.

>> Wow. Like the the the work satisfaction

you'd have cuz I've realized that it's

so easy for people to make bad decisions

when it's emotionally tough. And people

don't know when it's emotionally tough

because your brain doesn't really like

let you know this, right? So, for

example, if you're at a job and you

don't really like it, what's your

options? Well, your option is to reach

out to a bunch of other jobs, compare

them, and then, you know, you need you

need to prepare for interviews. Super

tough. You need to do the interview.

It's very emotionally suffering, and you

might get rejected. That's very sad. And

then you need to negotiate offers, which

is a horrible experience. And then you

need to tell your current employer,

"Hello, I'm leaving. I'm gonna leave."

>> Which is so mentally tough. So, before

your brain even like thinks about this

step, it will just be like, "Oh, yeah.

I'm probably doing the best thing I'm

doing right now. I'm probably learning

the most I can do right now. Like even

if you're super ambitious and you want

to learn fast, you will cons like

convince yourself that you're learning

the most you possibly can. Wherever you

are, even if it's your first job, even

if it's your first job and it's a

completely random job out of all

millions of jobs, you'll convince

yourself you're learning the most even

if you've been there for like three

years.

>> But what matters is uh what seeing the

truth, being like honest with yourself.

>> Yeah. What matters is, you know, see

what you want in life is a good salary.

That's like the simplest thing you can

want in life, right? A lot of people

just want a good salary and work with

good colleagues and you maybe they want

to work remotely. I don't know what they

want to do but they want some

combination of this right that's that's

fairly standard. So one very very clear

example is I had a friend in Sweden. Uh

I was making a normal Swedish salary

which is extremely low C2SF standards

from his standards were pretty good

right he was living life. I mean in

Sweden he had like a

>> you know probably like 50% higher than a

normal salary. And I told him many times

I was like dude why do you not apply to

San Francisco? I mean you'll just like

10x your salary and work with better

people and work on things that people

use and like all these things. And you

know he had all these reasons you know

came up in his brain for why you

shouldn't do this. And you know he

constantly pushed it forward and he

couldn't really even if he trusted me as

a person. You know your brain doesn't

allow you to think about this as an

opportunity because it's like so

emotionally tough. And one day I just

introduced him to a company and I was

like yeah [ __ ] it. I just put these two

together and make sure he starts

interviews. And when you start

interviews that's way more simple

because they will like try to pull you

into the company right. So they will do

it.

>> There's momentum.

>> Yeah. there's momentum and they'll do

all the annoying things for you and then

from out of nowhere give you an offer,

right? And you never had to think about

it and now when you have an offer, you

just need to sign it. And you the

emotionally like the right thing would

obviously be to to apply to, you know, a

couple other companies and see will

these people give me a better offer? Are

these people better to work with? Are

these more fun people believe in this

company more and I want to stay at it

longer? But the the easy thing to do

here, right, is just to accept it,

right? Anyway, yeah, this friend just

ended up 10xing his salary just like

that. And you know, he pushed this for

like I told him maybe for a year or so.

So if he 10x is his salary, I mean

that's a lot of money

>> just by coming to America or getting a

job with America.

>> That's like a full house in Sweden. He

just got People don't understand how

much he lose from this. He literally

lost buying a house in Sweden if you

just see it in like just currency,

right?

>> Yeah.

>> He lost a house just because he didn't

take he didn't do this very simple thing

which is applying San Francisco. It's

very simple.

>> What's your advice for people who want

to come to San Francisco? Why should

they come to San Francisco? Why should

they come to America? First of all, I

mean let's start simple. the talent

density is much higher. You'll work with

a very high concentration of talented

people and the salary will be much

higher. Like whatever you like want in

life, you know, your life standard will

always depend on your salary. So even in

the scenario where you're just like,

yeah, I just want a high life standard

and I'm fine, you know, and you know,

I'm fine moving to get permanent son,

which you know, for some people is a

very easy decision, for some people it's

a harder decision. But like if those two

things, I mean that's, you know, reason

enough. And then like the more ambitious

you become, the more obvious and like

the more objectively correct it is to

move to San Francisco. You really don't

have any other options. If you like if

you're really to like put your entire

life in startups, your best bet is

moving to San Francisco. The talent here

is extremely high. Capital is flowing

super freely. Everyone is talking all

the time. You know, you can hire

extremely good people and it's just

another momentum. Like if you've never

been to San Francisco, everyone are like

like told you should go to San

Francisco. like the first week they're

here, it's like always changes their

like yeah worldview, right? They're

like, "Holy [ __ ] I didn't know there

were this many people caring about

whatever I'm doing in in the entire

world." And I just met like more than I

ever thought would exist in the same

room at the same time, right? Which is

like a really motivating experience.

That's real motivation for you. That's

no like person standing and talking

about motivational speeches and they

tell you all this like random slope that

like doesn't make any sense. That just

sounds good. This is like real

motivation, right? You have people who

think like you, they act like you, they

work hard like you, they care like you,

they don't work 40hour weeks. It's just

an incredible city to to to be in. And

and I mean, look at what has come out

from Silicon Valley. I mean, nearly all

innovation happens here. Like it's, you

know, so much like probably more than

all of Europe combined happens in San

Francisco. The amount of capital in only

San Francisco is probably like magnitude

higher than in all of Europe together,

right? Now you have Apple, Google,

OpenAI, Anthropic, you have all these

huge companies. They all have their

headquarters here for a reason.

Everything you care about in life, like

life standard wise, like what makes your

life good? Well, you you have Google

maps, right? Before you had like

physical maps. Well, turns out uh Ela

Musk built maps like CIP 2, whatever it

was called like in San Francisco like 15

years ago. You have your iPhone, which

is an incredible piece of technology

built in San Francisco. You have

satellite internet. You have people, you

know, that go from being paralyzed to,

you know, being able to to to walk

again. You have like diseases that are

cured. Like this is all like nearly all

of this is from US and specifically San

Francisco. There's like a million people

living here. It's like same size of

Stockholm, right?

>> Yeah.

>> Um

>> it's crazy, but there's a network effect

and talent density here.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. So, what's your advice if someone

wants to come to San Francisco or move

here?

>> First of all, be highly skilled. I mean,

be good at something. That's the first

thing. And that will come easy, right?

If if you're ambitious and you want to

do things, you just start working with

real companies and you will become good,

right? So, uh when you have this, the

second step is, you know, find a company

that's ready to sponsor you. And this is

where you need to be good, right? is you

know you need to be really good because

this company will want to only hire like

they need to you know go through a visa

process which is you know some overhead

for them

>> and you know they obviously like rather

just take someone from the US if they

could right it's it's it's way more it's

way less overhead but turns out there's

very few extremely good software

engineers in the world and there's a

huge need of good software engineers in

the US or like everywhere in the world

basically needs really good software

engineers Um, you know, we we can never

get get enough. Like we could double the

amount of software engineers that are

really good in the US, we still have not

enough.

>> Yeah.

>> And that's why you have like a really

big chance to to to just move to the US

if you're from another country.

>> And you can do it over the internet.

>> You can do it over the internet. The

moment you can prove to the company that

you provide huge value, people in San

Francisco is very happy to sponsor you.

And especially now like the the paths

that one become easier and easier.

>> Um, definitely. So that's what I'm

doing. I'd had a blast talking with you.

I mean, your tweets are really funny.

Um, I think your takes are very

valuable. And for someone who's um

thought for himself this whole time ever

since like high school and even earlier,

like it's um it's really awesome for you

to be able to distill all that and then

share it here. So,

>> yeah, I really appreciate your time.

>> Always very happy to to share share hot

takes and, you know, help others other

people who who think like me to get

there faster. Right. I could have been

here four years faster if someone just

told me what I'm trying to tell people.

But then obviously that's from my

perspective like I have my own

>> yeah wants and and you know if someone

happens to feel like oh yeah this

applies to me as well right then it can

be hugely valuable.

>> Yeah. I I hope this this episode

captures some of that. I mean you are

basically telling the advice to your

younger self.

>> Yeah. And um you know I'm going to

really try and like distill it into

something uh really nice and that's what

I also want to do. I want to just like

help people like you who are from the

middle of nowhere around the world uh

inspire them with like real anecdotes

like you did not go to high school or

you did go to high school but you

dropped out of high school and you're

still able to land u probably one of the

most like soughtafter jobs at the best

AI company in the world. Um, and you did

that mostly on yourself, mostly through

your own ingenuity, mostly using the

internet. And like pretty much anyone

from anywhere, as long as they have the

internet, they've ch they can

>> they can do the same. And you know, I I

the goal of kind of this is to I want to

share more anecdotes and like origin

stories of like extraordinary people

like you and also just help a lot of

these people cuz I I mean similar to

you, I also went through the process of

like leaving high school to come to San

Francisco and I was like, "Oh [ __ ] I

wanted to stay here." And I was very

stubborn. I I just I had to be here and

I I kept like coming in and out on

tourist visas. Um I had the option to go

to college. I actually got into like one

of the best like you know most selective

programs in the world but I just was

like San Francisco is like clearly the

place to be where all the innovation are

where all the brilliant people and I

just need to figure out like how to get

a visa how to get like an O1 visa and

stay and certainly by like learning um

uh you know learning on my own learning

using AI like I taught myself how to

code with with AI working on my first

engineering job that led me to get my

someone to sponsor me as you said and

then actually be able to move here. Um

and uh yeah, I feel like this episode we

can make it so that a lot of people um

you know their lives are completely

different in better ways because they

listen to you. So

>> yeah, I hope so. That'd be epic.

>> That would be pretty epic. Like one more

thing that I thought about which was a

huge blocker for me when I was back in

Sweden and I wanted to do all these

things and I think a lot of people who

were thinking similarly as I did are

feeling this as well and that's that

they think they're not very smart. I

remember I thought I was an idiot

growing up or not an idiot. I was like

yeah okay I'm I'm I'm really good at

math. uh compared to like the people in

in in in elementary school. [laughter]

>> Yeah. To compare people in elementary

school where I lived. But you know, you

saw people, you know, people were

building rocket ships and people doing

all these humongous things and and I was

like, damn, like how can I ever do any

of these things? There's just no way.

But I think it's like really easy to

underestimate how much you can do. It's

super easy to underestimate. And

like probably people even just listening

to this are in the top like 1 percentile

people just from listening to this like

most people wouldn't have agency to like

oh I want to do something and then spend

an hour listening on something to do

that thing you're already top 1% and top

1% that's like you know they already

have like that top you know you know the

the top top 500 startups in the world or

even fewer like maybe top 200 startups

in the world that's like the top 1% of

people right so you

only that should should should make it

connected dots like okay if I just

continue down this path this is where I

end up

>> yeah you can come back to San Francisco

work at a top company or start a top

company and

>> yeah so much things to be done

>> yeah well this has been great Gabriel

thank you so much for your time I mean

>> yeah thanks for inviting me

>> holy [ __ ] I think you're one of the best

people at learning in the world with AI

and more people should know about that

>> yeah I'm trying and I hope some people

get you know much better than I do so I

can learn from them as

>> [laughter]