OpenAI research lead Noam Brown thinks certain AI ‘reasoning’ models could’ve arrived decades ago

Noam Brown, who leads AI reasoning research at OpenAI, says certain forms of “reasoning” AI models could’ve arrived 20 years earlier had researchers “known [the right] approach” and algorithms. “There were various reasons why this research direction was neglected,” Brown said during a panel at Nvidia’s GTC conference in San Jose on Wednesday. “I noticed over the course of my research that, OK, there’s something missing. Humans spend a lot of time thinking before they act in a tough situation. Maybe this would be very useful [in AI].” Brown was referring to his work on game-playing AI at Carnegie Melon University, including Pluribus, which defeated elite human professionals at poker. The AI Brown helped create was unique at the time in the sense that it “reasoned” through problems rather than attempting a more brute-force approach. Brown is one of the architects behind o1, an OpenAI AI model that employs a technique called test-time inference to “think” before it responds to queries. ... Read full article.