Douglas Li

Douglas Li

Building in AI. ex-OpenAI, ex-Facebook

About

Currently building something that focuses on delivering human authenticity in communication, while still enhancing it with AI. I was OpenAI's first hire for the London office, having been the technical lead and a research manager for the Human Data team. We collected data that trained and improved model capabilities - we dramatically improved GPT-4o, around evals, accents quality, image generation performance, and safety. Also 10+ years at Facebook. I built the first version of activity log, and early versions of the privacy selector. I revamped huge chunks of the chat and messages UI (https://techcrunch.com/2012/08/22/facebook-redesigns-messages-with-side-by-side-layout/). Also led multiple VR teams: Oculus Avatars, Horizon Workrooms (https://forwork.meta.com/gb/horizon-workrooms/).

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Gone streaking
Gone streaking

Forums

Kiya

3d ago

First-time maker (Solo Dev). Launching Sunday and terrified!

Hi everyone,

I've been a lurker here for a while, but I'm finally taking the plunge and launching my first solo project this Sunday (Jan 11).

It s a simple private movie and series logger. I built it because I got tired of the ads on IMDb and the social pressure of other apps. I just wanted something mindful that was for me, not for likes.

Since I m doing this completely alone with $0 budget, I m pretty nervous about the 'Launch Day' chaos.

p/meet-tingDan Bulteel

2d ago

Why Agents Will Unseat More Incumbents Than Social Ever Did

Hey all,

15 years ago I wrote an article about the rise of a more social web for Huff Post.

Murrorp/murrorMona Truong

3d ago

What made you choose the company/product you’re building today?

At the beginning, my reason was very simple: I needed a job and I genuinely liked the product.

I graduated with a Marketing degree, but I never felt like I belonged in agencies or similar environments. It just wasn t for me. At the same time, I didn t have much experience in tech either. So I took a leap of faith and applied for a Customer Support role, almost blindly.

The early days were tough. I had no technical background, no real understanding of how apps were built, and everything felt overwhelming. But the product itself became my motivation. I started from the most basic things: learning simple technical terms, understanding how an app is structured, and slowly exploring how everything works behind the scenes.

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