OpenAI’s Head of Design: This is the best time in history to be a designer | Ian Silber

About this episode

Ian Silber is the head of product design at OpenAI, where he has led the design of ChatGPT, Codex, and all of OpenAI’s product experience for the past three years. Before OpenAI, he was at Artifact, the AI-powered news app built by the founders of Instagram. Prior to that, he spent eight years at Instagram, where he worked on products including Reels. Ian is one of the most consequential designers working in AI today, and he takes us inside how OpenAI designs ChatGPT, Codex, and the future of how we will interact with AI. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why Ian believes this is the best time in history to be a product designer 2. Why engineers 10x’d with AI but design teams haven’t 3. What OpenAI looks for when hiring designers 4. “Just do less”: Ian’s counterintuitive advice to his designers 5. The future of ChatGPT as a super app 6. Where humans still win: user understanding, invention, and point of view — Brought to you by: WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more Mercury—Radically different banking, now with Command — Where to find Ian Silber: • X: https://x.com/iansilber • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iansilbe