Good Disruption Good Disruption: Episode 28 - Large Language Models (LLMs)
Nov 3, 2025
Dr. Ronnie Chatterji, OpenAI's first Chief Economist and a distinguished professor at Duke University, delves into the transformative impact of large language models (LLMs). They discuss the explosive growth of ChatGPT and how it changes everyday workflows, from teaching to creative tasks. Chatterji addresses concerns about job displacement and the ongoing geopolitical implications of AI. He highlights the balance between academic research and industry application, emphasizing the need for ethical oversight as LLMs evolve and integrate into our lives.
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Episode notes
ChatGPT's Rapid Inflection Moment
- The 2022 ChatGPT release was a rapid adoption inflection point that revealed LLMs' broad public impact.
- Mike Lenox calls it possibly the fastest-diffusing technology in history with massive early user growth.
Transformers Enabled Long-Form Understanding
- The transformer architecture enabled models to process much longer contexts and cohere across paragraphs.
- Yael credits transformers with unlocking exponential gains over earlier NLP approaches like Word2Vec.
Instructor Uses LLMs As Teaching And Productivity Tools
- Yael uses LLMs for workflows, teaching, code help, and case preparation across her work.
- She emphasizes verifying generated code and teaching students to understand outputs.
