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Former OpenAI researcher’s new company will teach you how to build an LLM

Karpathy's Eureka Labs will pair human-made curriculum with an AI-powered assistant.

Benj Edwards –
File photo of children in a classroom listening to a robot.
Credit: Getty Images

On Tuesday, former OpenAI researcher Andrej Karpathy announced the formation of a new AI learning platform called Eureka Labs. The venture aims to create an "AI native" educational experience, with its first offering focused on teaching students how to build their own large language model (LLM).

"It's still early days but I wanted to announce the company so that I can build publicly instead of keeping a secret that isn't," Karpathy wrote on X.

While the idea of using AI in education isn't particularly new, Karpathy's approach hopes to pair expert-designed course materials with an AI-powered teaching assistant based on an LLM, aiming to provide personalized guidance at scale. This combination seeks to make high-quality education more accessible to a global audience.

The platform's inaugural course, LLM101n, targets an undergraduate-level audience. It will walk students through the process of training an AI system called a "Storyteller AI Large Language Model" that will "create, refine and illustrate little stories." Eureka Labs will offer this course online at first, then through in-person groups in the future.

Karpathy no stranger to AI education

Andrej Karpathy, then Director of AI Tesla, speaks at the Train AI conference at Pier 27 in San Francisco, Ca. on Thurs. May 10, 2018.
Andrej Karpathy, then director of AI Tesla, speaks at the Train AI conference at Pier 27 in San Francisco in 2018.
Credit: Getty Images
Andrej Karpathy, then director of AI Tesla, speaks at the Train AI conference at Pier 27 in San Francisco in 2018. Credit: Getty Images

Karpathy's roots in AI go deep. In 2015, he received a PhD from Stanford University under computer scientist Dr. Fei-Fei Li. He was one of the founding members of OpenAI as a research scientist, then moved to Tesla to become its senior director of AI between 2017 and 2022. In 2023, Karpathy rejoined OpenAI for a year, departing in February.

This new venture builds on Karpathy's track record on AI education. Over the past year, Karpathy has posted several highly regarded tutorials covering AI concepts on YouTube, including an instructional video about how to build an LLM from scratch, which currently has 4.5 million views. The videos have showcased his ability to break down complex topics for a broader audience.

"@EurekaLabsAI is the culmination of my passion in both AI and education over ~2 decades," Karpathy wrote on X. "My interest in education took me from YouTube tutorials on Rubik's cubes to starting CS231n at Stanford, to my more recent Zero-to-Hero AI series. While my work in AI took me from academic research at Stanford to real-world products at Tesla and AGI research at OpenAI. All of my work combining the two so far has only been part-time, as side quests to my 'real job,' so I am quite excited to dive in and build something great, professionally and full-time."

Eureka Labs' vision extends beyond its initial AI course, hinting at a broader curriculum that could span various subjects. "Today, we are heads down building LLM101n," the announcement reads, "but we look forward to a future where AI is a key technology for increasing human potential. What would you like to learn?"

Listing image: Getty Images

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Benj Edwards Senior AI Reporter
Benj Edwards is Ars Technica's Senior AI Reporter and founder of the site's dedicated AI beat in 2022. He's also a widely-cited tech historian. In his free time, he writes and records music, collects vintage computers, and enjoys nature. He lives in Raleigh, NC.
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jerieljan
jerieljan
I actually think Karpathy is among the better folks that had been involved in the OpenAI / Tesla crowd. At the very least, his technical capability and extensive knowledge on deep learning and neural networks is imho vast and impressive.

Doing the LLM training implementation in C/CUDA is quite the amazing feat, and seeing him going back towards the education sector is a good thing.
bigcheese
bigcheese
Here’s a leader in his field that quit his job at a large for profit company, to dedicate his time to teach millions of people, many from an underprivileged background, fundamental skills about transformers and neural nets. How is this a bad thing?

If your worried about this type of tech being in the hands of just a few, clearly efforts like this is a step in the right direction. And if you think that LLMs are useless, giving more people an understanding of the fundamentals so that they can apply it to things other than LLMs also sounds like the right move.

I don’t understand the haters at all. People that want to dedicate their lives to spreading knowledge should be celebrated.
randomcat
randomcat
His videos on YouTube are incredibly educational. For everyone who says "nobody knows what's going on in one of these," well, here's a person who knows exactly what is going on and would like to patiently and clearly explain it to you, at your own pace, for free.

Even if you think LLM's and generative AI etc. are a Very Bad Thing, you should know what's actually going on with them instead of just accepting the deranged hyperbole that gets thrown around (both for and against this kind of tech).
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