1 What Did Ilya See?
This chapter covers
- Ilya Sutskever’s journey to prominence
- Founding of OpenAI as a counterbalance to Google
- GPT-2’s surprising capabilities and controversy
- OpenAI board crisis and Altman’s ouster with Ilya at the center
- The enduring mystery and influence of Sutskever’s List
In November 2023, Elon Musk tweeted, “Something scared Ilya enough to want to fire Sam. What was it?” Soon after, the phrase “What did Ilya see?” went viral, sparking curiosity among AI researchers and enthusiasts.[1],[2] Had Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, glimpsed an existential risk that others missed? Many thought so.
These moments reflect a deeper tension at AI’s frontier, but to understand them, we must look at the broader intellectual landscape that shaped Ilya’s thinking. Specifically, we need to examine “Sutskever’s List,” a collection of nearly thirty papers he once described to software legend John Carmack as containing “90% of what matters today.”
Such clarity, however, is elusive. Rather than seeing each paper as an isolated contribution, this book explores them as interconnected threads in a larger narrative—one that reveals not just the evolution of AI, but the mind of one of its most influential thinkers.