Last year, OpenAI decided it had to pay more attention to its power users, the ones with a knack for discovering new uses for AI: doctors, scientists, and coders, along with companies building their own software around OpenAI’s API. And so the company turned to post-training research lead Michelle Pokrass to spin up a team to better understand them.
“The AI field is moving so quickly, the power-user use cases of today are really the median-user use cases a year from now, or two years from now,” Pokrass says. “It’s really important for us to stay on the leading edge and build to where capabilities are emerging, rather than just focusing on what people are using the models for now.”
Pokrass, a former software engineer for Coinbase and Clubhouse, came to OpenAI in 2022, fully sold on AI after experiencing the magic of coding tools such as GitHub Copilot. She played key roles in developing OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 and GPT-5, and now she focuses on testing and tweaking models based on users who are pushing AI to its limits.
Specifically, Pokrass’s team works on post-training, a process that helps large language models understand the spirit of user requests. This refining allows ChatGPT to code, say, a fully polished to-do list app rather than just instructions on how to theoretically make one. “There’s been lots of examples of GPT-5 helping with scientific breakthroughs, or being able to discover new mathematical proofs, or working on important biological problems in healthcare, saving doctors and specialists a lot of time,” Pokrass says. “These are examples of exactly the kinds of capabilities we want to keep pushing.”
Creating a team with this niche focus is unusual among Big Tech companies, which tend to target broad audiences they can monetize at scale through, say, targeted ads. Catering to power users isn’t a revenue play, Pokrass says, even if many pay $200 per month for ChatGPT Pro subscriptions.
Instead, it’s a way to assess the “why” of AI, with power users pointing to unseen opportunities. With traditional tech, it’s usually clear how people will use a product a few years down the road, Pokrass says. “With AI, we’re all discovering with our users, live, what exactly is highest utility, and how people can get value out of this.”
Eventually, OpenAI figures those use cases will help inform the features that it builds for everyone else. Pokrass gives the example of medical professionals using AI in their decision-making, which in turn could help ChatGPT better understand the kind of medical questions people are asking it (for better or worse).
“There’s always work for this team, because as we push boundaries for what our models can do, the frontier just gets moved out, and then we start to see an influx of new activity of people using these new capabilities,” Pokrass says.
This profile is part of Fast Company’s AI 20 for 2025, our roundup spotlighting 20 of AI’s most innovative technologists, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, and creative thinkers.
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