alt Hacker NewsKeen includes researchers like Richard Sutton, Joseph Modayil etc. Also John has being doing it full time for almost 5 years now so given his background and aptitude for learning I would imaging by this time he is more of an AI guy then a fairly large percentage of AI PhDs.
Yeah and in another 5 years he'd probably be at nobel laureate level in AI. I don't think that's how it works. What do you mean? Even a phd program can take 5 years sometimes. Also the man started saying he'd bring about AGI right at the gate. He wasn't being exactly humble.
God I hate sounding like this. I swear I'm not too good for John Carmack, as he's infinitely smarter than me. But I just find it a bit weird.
I'm not against his discovery, just against the vibe and framing of the op.