When Emrick Donadei first joined Google, artificial intelligence was not part of his role. Like many engineers at the company a few years ago, his work had nothing to do with large language models or AI safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn’t qualified for an AI role<\/a>,\u201d Donadei, now 32 and based in New York, told Business Insider. \u201cI didn\u2019t have the right credentials, and when I spoke with other teams, I felt a disconnect.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, he works as a software engineer <\/a>on Google\u2019s AI safety team \u2014 a role he did not enter through a formal AI degree or promotion.<\/p>\n What changed inside Google after ChatGPT?<\/p>\n Donadei says the shift began when ChatGPT\u2019<\/a>s launch pushed Google to move faster on large language models. As the company opened internal pathways for engineers to change teams, he became interested \u2014 but unsure if he belonged.<\/p>\n Also Read<\/strong> | Techie says ChatGPT helped him lose 27kg using just 7 daily prompts<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cFundamentally, it\u2019s similar to my last role,\u201d he said. \u201cBut instead of building software, I\u2019m building LLMs, which requires data, training, and compute.\u201d<\/p>\n At that point, he had no direct experience working with AI products, making discussions with AI teams challenging.<\/p>\n Donadei believes rising demand helped, but effort mattered just as much.<\/p>\n \u201cI was at the right company at a time when demand was high,\u201d he said. \u201cBut also because I decided to participate in a hackathon.\u201d<\/p>\n That decision, he says, changed everything.<\/p>\n \u201cI think hackathons are the best way for everybody to get into AI,\u201d Donadei told Business Insider.<\/p>\n