Illia Polosukhin On Inventing The Tech Behind Generative AI At Google

Illia Polosukhin is one of the “Transformer 8,” a group that many call the founding fathers of generative AI. They co-wrote a paper at Google in 2017 that established the core concept that makes generative AI possible: transformers. Polosukhin left Google before the paper was published to co-found Near, an AI startup and blockchain ecosystem with millions of users. CNBC's Katie Tarasov sat down with Polosukhin to talk about how the transformer was invented and what he sees as the pitfalls and possibilities of the tech revolution he helped kick off.

Produced by: Katie Tarasov
Shot and Edited by: Lisa Setyon
Supervising Producer: Jeniece Pettitt
Additional Footage: Near, Nvidia

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Illia Polosukhin On Inventing The Tech Behind Generative AI At Google

[velo]

with how easy his explanations are, you can clearly see that he was one of the first ppl who coded it.

[aberba]

These Russians are killing it in the AI space

[gyahoo]

Proper crisp precise and upto point conversation by illia co inventor of transformers. No doomerism opinions like what researchers do

[ichoudhury]

Great discussion, a lot of great question. However, I would’ve preferred some near protocol specific questions. I liked understanding the synergy between near AI versus near protocol 😊

[RyuuOujiXS]

The fact that this is considered a breakthrough proves to everyone how stupid most people are, including Google employee's. maybe we should make it read the sentence instead of just a word." "OMG, that's a breakthrough, derp derp!"

[___________]

Hi Katie,
Congratulations to you for giving birth to a new life. 🎉🎉

[MelonHusk]

The curation and importance of data is highly underestimated. He explained it really well.

[elmermarko]

Near should make great gains the next few months. Near is at the forefront of Ai and crypto.

[TommyChong]

I recently read an article about a man who identified AI stocks before the AI boom, highlighting the importance of information and insight. I believe AI is poised to enter a new phase, and I aim to position my $200k investment portfolio to capitalize on significant gains.

[sputnik]

I think what we learned is you have to be named Ilya or Illia to lead the AI race; so I’ll be changing my name to Ilya or some variant

[auro]

this technology may have been from darpa

[littlebrit]

They are both Ukrainians. Ukraine has done so much for blockchain.

[attilapataki]

Ok! While I don't necessarily like how he describes AI in the beginning (and this is just a matter of taste and subjectivity) I do appreciate him for how he answered the doomsday question. Congrats 👏🏻and for humanities sake: I do hope there are more Ai devs like him.

[JohnDoe-mxrr]

The doomsday saying there no economic has not seen industrial war machine

[donson]

Contributed the least to the paper. Another rug pull.

[urbanstrencan]

He is the one who started our next revolution with AI.

[cryptomotivation]

Near is the top Ai blockchain and will be a top 5 coin this crypto cycle. Easy 10X from here.

[ricnyc]

I have a question: are the transformers based on software or hardware? Is it like an "if - else statement"?

[sputnik]

I think what we learned is you have to be named Ilya or Illia to lead the AI race

[anipacify]

Ashish Vaswani goat 🐐. The main guy behind the transformer paper