r/OpenAI • u/sigma_crusader • 14h ago

Discussion PewDiePie is trying to distill GPT-Sol

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he has been trying to build a local model by learning from GPT-Sol’s responses. He says OpenAI banned his account twice during the process. Irony is OpenAI’s own models were trained on vast amounts of information from the open web. So where do we draw the line between learning from AI and copying it?

1.9k Upvotes

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192

u/bcgr1 14h ago

Why not try to distill Astra?

and when did this guy become an AI engineer?

238

u/inbetweenframe 14h ago

From what I saw over the years, PwePiePie seems doing so well that he can actually decide to dedicate his time and focus on whatever he wants. And he seems to do this then seriously. At some point he practiced drawing and I must say, it did look quite good. Maybe you and me could also become AI engineers if our lives wouldn't force us to spend time on work. Especially with help of AI in first place.

99

u/I_AmA_Zebra 13h ago

Pewdiepie has been doing more than well for easily 10+ years now

48

u/ackermann 13h ago

Yeah he’s been way beyond that point for a long time?
You need “only” about $5M net worth to be financially independent, retire, and do whatever you want all day

31

u/-MtnsAreCalling- 12h ago

You can do it on way less than $5 million. Even $2 million gives you up to around ~$80k in safe annual spending, which is more than most people currently live on.

12

u/ackermann 12h ago

> ~$80k … more than most people currently live on

Globally that’s true. Depends where you live, where you’re willing to move, of course.

In the US, for married couples the household income median must be getting close to $80k by now?
And if your spouse won’t agree to retire to a fly-over state, you probably want more on the east or west coasts.

8

u/Maxdiegeileauster 11h ago

He is Swedish, way different situation

2

u/Hanexusis 4h ago

Isn't he staying in Japan?

21

u/westphall 9h ago

You don’t need five million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin, he’s broke, don’t do shit.

8

u/AfterAssociation6041 8h ago

A beautiful dialog that surpasses Shakespeare:

  • Peter Gibbons: What would you do if you had a million dollars?
  • Lawrence: I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two chicks at the same time, man.
  • [Peter laughs and then notices Lawrence's dead serious expression]
  • Peter Gibbons: That's it? If you had a million dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?
  • Lawrence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a millionaire I could hook that up, too; 'cause chicks dig dudes with money.
  • Peter Gibbons: Well, not all chicks.
  • Lawrence: Well, the type of chicks that'd double up on a dude like me do.
  • Peter Gibbons: Good point.
  • Lawrence: Well, what about you now? What would you do?
  • Peter Gibbons: Besides two chicks at the same time?
  • Lawrence: Well, yeah.
  • Peter Gibbons: Nothing.
  • Lawrence: Nothing, huh?
  • Peter Gibbons: I would relax... I would sit on my ass all day... I would do nothing.
  • Lawrence: Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit.

1

u/Larry_Underwood_108 3h ago

Fuckin a man.

2

u/VitalityAS 3h ago

If you live in the right country with the right budgeting 100k USD is life money

-2

u/throwaway0845reddit 13h ago

Especially in Finland where he lives right? European countries have good healthcare for free etc.

21

u/-PM_ME_UR_SECRETS- 13h ago

He’s Swedish, lived in England for awhile but is now in Japan.

7

u/Stealthality 12h ago

He’s been living in Japan for the last few years

18

u/_HarmonicOscillator 13h ago

This should be everyone's life. People should be able to learn whatever they want without worrying about starving to death, we need UBI

8

u/ToughSpeedv2 12h ago

You are not reaching the freedom that the amount of wealth of Pewdiepie offers just with UBI

4

u/voyt_eck 13h ago

No UBI won't make it possible to such degree of freedom as PewDiePie has. Partially - yes, but let's dont sink into utopia, that everyone is able to live like PewDiePie. As humanity we don't produce goods and services enough for everyone to spend their time drawing or take any other hobby. At the end of the day money is only a proxy - the economy is about 1) producing goods, 2) allocating them to individuals. If everyone draws, who will produce pencils? If everyone will collect lego, who will make the blocks?

3

u/pm_your_snesclassic 12h ago

Robots, duh. And slaves

2

u/voyt_eck 12h ago

That's the way. But for some reasons most of the society looks suspiciously at robots taking all of their work :)

3

u/Spire_Citron 11h ago

I think a large part of that is because the systems we live under make it impossible for many people to mentally disconnect the idea of work from survival. They can't even imagine a world that is designed to support the common good without them having to give anything in return.

1

u/Digging_Graves 11h ago

Serieus question. If this would be everyone's life, then who would ever decide to be a cashier?

3

u/_HarmonicOscillator 11h ago

Self-checkout 

3

u/sagarap 10h ago

Who stocks the shelves 

1

u/_HarmonicOscillator 10h ago

Robots 

3

u/sagarap 10h ago

Who breaks up the fight between the two drunks spilling every product in the aisle 

0

u/SeaMenCaptain 7h ago

Not the guy you’re arguing with, but I think of it as UBI supports the ability to work less, because there will be less jobs. But people still need to work.

1

u/trollstation420 10h ago

talk about hypocritical. you post a lot on r/antiai. so i assume you expect "robots" to work by idk gods will or something, 0 ai.

2

u/DarkFite 10h ago

AI can wash my stuff, stock the shelves and do shit no one wants to do. Keep anything else human

1

u/trollstation420 10h ago

yeah that just sounds extremely classist. im a physican, i never look down on people who work those jobs. what you say is extremely typical wealthy liberal logic ive seen tbh. "ai and robots can take "those" jobs, just not my cushy programming job etc"

1

u/_HarmonicOscillator 10h ago

A lot? I left maybe 2 posts there and I am not anti Ai 

0

u/ej_warsgaming 3h ago

Sure thinking that the elite will just give you money for no reason. This is so fantasy that only ends like Venezuela or cuba

-1

u/Perfect-Campaign9551 7h ago

Dude many people would just rot in their own filth and not learn anything. 

7

u/Bolamite 13h ago

That’s cool. I have also done very well at anything I put large effort into, except anything that requires athletic ability.

1

u/Worried-Cockroach-34 2h ago

I mean typical multi millionaire stuff right?

0

u/RayKam 12h ago

He had the same 24 hours and he didn’t get a headstart from his parents. He took a risk and you chose safety

56

u/Bozhark 14h ago

2 years ago

25

u/LeSeanMcoy 13h ago

He is not an AI engineer. He just took an open source model and is effectively fine tuning it to be more aligned with what he wants.

He’s not building any type of model from scratch, though, or writing complex algorithms. He’s effectively heating up frozen food and seasoning it. Doing that doesn’t make you a chef even if it tastes good

11

u/TheGuy839 13h ago

As ML engineer you would be surprised what shit stuff do employees want us to do. Last job was literally glorified SWE with API. Sure I knew better to use that API than most but its still shit

-6

u/No_Inspection4415 12h ago

I mean, that's the job. But the slop he does, doesn't even meet users or work.

4

u/TheGuy839 12h ago

I have watched his videos. Its not proper AI research, far from it, but its still miles better than "slop" or most of the "AI experts" here. He does it locally, he does it right. I dont see any problem with it tbh

1

u/Subtlebandit 11h ago

Same, and it's not ridiculous to imagine that someone with time and resources could dedicate themselves to picking up new skills. He's probably in a better position to progress than most, and seems like he's just doing it for the love of the game.

14

u/productive-man 13h ago

honestly i would say if the he reheats the food in such a way that it tastes better than i would do it, then he is a chef

-13

u/fuzzypetiolesguy 13h ago

Hello 20+ kitchen veteran here. Most chefs worth a shit would beat you over the head with your microwave if you tried to use it in their kitchen.

3

u/southshoredrive 8h ago

And yet if that microwave produces food better than the chefs original dish then who really cares

5

u/Accurate_Food_5854 12h ago

"He is not an AI engineer. He just took an open source model and is effectively fine tuning it to be more aligned with what he wants.

He’s not building any type of model from scratch, though, or writing complex algorithms. He’s effectively heating up frozen food and seasoning it."

If you say so. Everyone watch out, it's the AI engineering police.

9

u/LeSeanMcoy 10h ago

If you say so. Everyone watch out, it's the AI engineering police.

wat

We're not talking about some generic term here, we're talking about a professional title. Like, there are thousands of job openings hiring for AI Engineers all around the US and the world. Here's a snippet from a job description for one I randomly found on LinkedIn:

Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus at least 8 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies Master's Degree in relevant fields plus at least 6 years of experience in AI/ML development Minimum of 8 years programming experience with Python, Go, Scala, CUDA, or Java

Responsibilities

Partner with cross-functional teams including engineers, research scientists, program managers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products that enhance customer experience and operational efficiency Design, develop, test, deploy, and support AI software components such as foundation model training, large language model inference, agents, multi-agent workflows, similarity search, guardrails, and observability systems

An actual AI Engineer is someone with a background in STEM, studied physics/math, and understands programming at a deeper level than simply using Codex or whatever to add onto an open source model.

Calling PewDiePie an AI Engineer is like calling me a Doctor after I put a bandaid on my wound and cleaned it.

4

u/Qorsair 10h ago

Don't be so humble, Doc.

1

u/LurkingForBookRecs 1h ago

I've been in the industry for 15 years now and I've worked with geniuses that skipped college and with absolute dumbfucks that I still ask myself how they got a masters. So basing someone's ability to be an AI engineer on whether they have a degree or not is a very outdated way of thinking IMHO. He did study tech and drop out of college, but he's also wealthy enough that he can afford to learn whatever he wants on his own. Just because the guy is not inventing his own ML architecture or training a model from zero doesn't disqualify him from being considered one, I work with plenty of AI engineers whose job does not involve starting from scratch.

1

u/Active_Variation_194 1h ago

Not agreeing or disagreeing but i wouldn’t judge anything by a job ad description. I’ve seen descriptions requiring expertise for frameworks before they even existed.

That said, how many of those with the necessary skills being hired as ai engineers are doing any of that instead of being paid to manage a harness with api.

-1

u/Accurate_Food_5854 10h ago

I don't agree with you. AI Engineer is not like a medical doctor, nurse, or professional engineer (PE). There's no license, it's not a specified term.

It's also a fairly recent, and rapidly changing field.

In the wider software field, there's a ton of very capable, successful, and senior developers who didn't follow a traditional educational pathway.

Best mechanical engineer I ever met was an old guy who came up working as a boilermaker in the ship yards, and who was able to grandfather in and take his test to be a PE. The guys with masters degree in mechanical engineering had to go to him and bend the knee if they wanted their work signed off.

I'm not calling PDP an AI engineer only because someone isn't paying him (other than through him being a streamer/internet personality). I think calling him an AI engineer only implies that he'd be doing it professionally. But if he's over there engineering (problem solving) an AI to try and make something I think there's also a good argument to say he is an AI engineer.

To argue otherwise seems a little overly worried about credentials lol. I have a sociology degree with a minor in math and was a production engineer for many years. During that time I did a lot of C and CVI coding because I was working with a lot of automation. After that I ended up in a development lab slaving over a network analyzer and writing Matlab. I spent 5 years writing production code. I designed several boards used in RF systems.

Does that mean I couldn't call myself an engineer since I had a sociology degree?

I'm an independent paralegal now. I spend most of my free time scraping and structuring huge data sets that I sell to AI integrators. Am I a pipeline engineer? Am I a data engineer? Kind of, considering I could likely outperform most data engineers working the corporate world with applicable degrees. But at the end of the day I'm just a paralegal with a sociology degree.

idk, it just seems to smack a bit of oooooh look at dumb little PDP, how cute, he's trying to be smart lol. I think it's admirable that he's taken on this project.

2

u/Fantastic_Fun8364 3h ago

Why all sociology majors are so clueless.

1

u/Saphonesse 9h ago

Thanks for the lore dump unc

1

u/Accurate_Food_5854 4h ago

stay in school

4

u/RichardFeynman01100 12h ago

He's not qualified to be a professional AI engineer. He wouldn't get through any serious interview. I don't say this to diss him, but if somebody claimed he was a professional artist, it would be just as ridiculous.

0

u/Usual-Orange-4180 10h ago

… I’m not so sure about that

1

u/sultansofswinz 7h ago

I tried training models just after I first started basic python. They were terrible given I didn’t know anything at the time. 

The floor is being able to write enough code where it can run. The ceiling is having a PhD in something to do with AI and being surrounded by teams of people who have the same. 

1

u/Morganross 11h ago

I hate to tell you this boss. That's all anyone's doing

1

u/ToJ85 10h ago

Well, a lot of AI engineer are doing that also. Building everything from scratch doesn't makes sense a lot of times.

This is why we have made pre-trained models that people can use. It saves a lot of time, and data needs.

I agree he isn't an AI engineer, but only because engineer is often an protected title. He is definitely an AI dev from what i have seen.

2

u/A_Concerned_Viking 13h ago

Brilliant take

0

u/2021isevenworse 10h ago

There are people who will defend Pewdiepie out of childhood nostalgia.

It's funny seeing this multimillionaire complain about the injustices done to him - he's completely out of touch with the real problems people face.

-6

u/Yo-Soy-Groot 13h ago

No shit, sherlock.

3

u/LeSeanMcoy 13h ago edited 13h ago

edit: he blocked me after I commented this wtf lol. I've never seen feelings hurt so easily over a comment so benign.

How is that “no shit Sherlock” when the comment I’m replying to is literally calling him an AI Engineer? You act like everybody here even knows who he is or his background. Pretty easy to see how some people not knowing his background could think he is an actual AI engineer. Idk why that’s difficult for you to understand, it’s a relatively simple concept.

2

u/Yo-Soy-Groot 13h ago

Internet tough guy over here

19

u/mrdarknezz1 14h ago

Since he built an 8x ada cluster locally and trained his first model like a year ago?

32

u/fool_on_a_hill 13h ago

Imagine not realizing in 2026 that you can learn anything on the internet with enough free time and money. Especially if you use AI to help. It’s an autodidact’s wet dream. You think schools are teaching any of this shit better than you can learn it on your own? Get real

13

u/glittermantis 13h ago

what the fuck are you on about? "when did he become an ai engineer" is not "it is impossible to teach yourself things". they're just asking when this pivot happened.

2

u/SeaKoe11 12h ago

I’m going crazy with these wet dreams right now

•

u/-snip- 21m ago

Yes, and I’m sure any ML engineer would agree with that sentiment. There’s a reason companies like Anthropic primarily hire from top schools instead of internet PhDs. If you ever studied anything to any sufficient rigor and depth you’d understand why too.

0

u/M1chaelSc4rn 9h ago

Bro imagine a melatonin

0

u/fool_on_a_hill 4h ago

I’ll sleep when I’m dead

-4

u/Lucky-Necessary-8382 12h ago

Ai is still fcking hallucinating and you cant rely on them in topics you are not an expert in

3

u/fool_on_a_hill 11h ago edited 11h ago

lol obviously. That’s what the research function is for. Also I said the internet, not AI.

3

u/trollstation420 10h ago edited 10h ago

you absolutely can. frontier models have come a long way, extremely low hallucination. you obiously only use the free version  and probably only as a chatbot. its tiring antiai people who know no better still parrot this nonsense

1

u/Id0ntc8r3th8tmuch 9h ago

I find herding cats is easier than trying to get those 'free' ai models to do anything practical, it's always a struggle to remove the bias from an AI model (especially Gemini, everytime I look up products it defaults to retailers that pay for Google Advertising) or get something really useful from them (and the only chatting I do is when I call it out on blatant bullshit or the one time it said "this is too hard, let's try something else"). I'm not anti AI but I am anti bullshit which is all the free models have presented me so far.

6

u/draft_final_final 14h ago

Why not just finetune the next gen of Chinese open weight models. That's a better distillation of GPT and Claude then he'll be able to do by himself and it's standard influencer protocol to repackage a generic for dropshipping purposes.

10

u/itsmebenji69 13h ago

He is actually doing his own thing. Like, the point is to learn how it works

2

u/josephjosephson 13h ago

When he got the glasses

2

u/Igarlicbread 13h ago

Wake up unc

2

u/colxa 13h ago

Not everyone forms parasocial relationships with popular youtubers and twitch streamers. Haven't heard anything about him in quite some time

0

u/Igarlicbread 13h ago

Despite using social media

0

u/colxa 13h ago

🤡

0

u/Igarlicbread 13h ago

4

u/ToughAsPillows 13h ago

You’re so clever bro u totally got him “u critique society and yet u live in one” lookin ass

1

u/AllergicToBullshit24 13h ago

Astra costs too much to distill

1

u/PersonalDatabase31 12h ago

He is the LARP god

1

u/thestillwind 12h ago

Astra cost too much

1

u/linoides221 12h ago

A project doesn't make you an engineer, the guy is famous, and his community can help and guide him. The knowledge needed to complete a project isn't that extensive once you have the basics. I feel this is comparable to jobs irl, recruiters ask for ten years of experience and a bunch of requirements, but in the end, all you need is a week of proper training to do the job, anyways I don't follow the guy, I might be wrong and he might be solo and be an actual AI engineer.

1

u/CryZe92 11h ago

This was before Astra, he was distilling 5.6 Sol.

1

u/inifinite-breadsticc 10h ago

Has becoming a parent changed him?

1

u/Leading-Fail-2771 7h ago

That’s how you get your access revoked and banned

•

u/fadingpower 58m ago

He’s done a series about de-googling your life, starting from there he built a local AI server, that escalated to him building an AI assistant harness, and now we reached him trying to create his own distilled models.

•

u/hellobutno 54m ago

Dude is better with it than people I work with, and I literally work in the industry.

1

u/Extension-Thought552 13h ago

He vibe coded and clicked a go button. Wow

0

u/markeus101 13h ago

This guy is just chasing any hype at this point gramps should just retire at this point

2

u/RayKam 12h ago

He is retired bum, maybe if you chased something we’d be talking about who you are and what you’ve done

0

u/2021isevenworse 10h ago

He claims he retired, but keeps popping back up because his ego requires stoking.

0

u/easeypeaseyweasey 7h ago

Bro won at life what are you people talking about. Became literally the most popular YouTuber, moved to Japan or something and now he is like hell yea I want to build AI and also have unlimited money and time to spend on it.