• “Two years of planning… just for the training run to start.”

That’s not the kind of headline you see when people rave about GPT-4.5. But behind the sleek outputs and viral demos lies a story of extreme ambition, sleepless nights, and a staggering scale of problem-solving most of us never hear about.

In this episode, we pull back the curtain on the real story behind GPT-4.5—with insights straight from three of the OpenAI engineers who helped build it. From the ground-up system design to unforeseen bugs in foundational tools, what emerges isn’t just a tale of smarter AI—it’s a masterclass in engineering resilience, team collaboration, and creative troubleshooting under immense pressure.

You’ll hear:

• Why a torch.sum bug nearly derailed a training run costing millions

• How 5–10 people can now retrain GPT-4 from scratch (it used to take an army)

• What "effective compute" really means—and why it mattered more than raw power

• The surprising moment mid-run when a single tweak led to a major leap in performance

• Why AI’s next frontier isn’t just about GPUs—it’s about making better use of the data we already have

This isn’t about hype. It’s about the messy, human, and mind-blowing journey of building one of the most powerful AI systems ever created. If you’ve ever wondered what it actually takes to push the frontier of intelligence, this episode will leave you both awed—and deeply curious about what comes next.

🎧 Tap play to dive into the trenches of GPT-4.5—and don’t forget to follow the show for more deep dives into the tech shaping our future.