GPT-5: Everything You Need to Know

April 24, 2024
RSS
News Trends
0

This super long article—part review, part exploration—is about GPT-5. But it is about much more. It’s about what we can expect from next-gen AI models. It’s about the exciting new features that are appearing on the horizon (like reasoning and agents). It’s about GPT-5 the technology and GPT-5 the product. It’s about business pressures on OpenAI by its competition and the technical constraints its engineers are facing. It’s about all those things—that’s why it’s 14,000 words long.

You’re now wondering why you should spend the next hour reading this mini-book-sized post when you’ve already heard the leaks and rumors about GPT-5. Here’s the answer: Scattered info is useless without context; the big picture becomes clear only when you have it all in one place. This is it.

Before we start, here’s some quick background on OpenAI’s success streak and why the immense anticipation of GPT-5 puts them under pressure. Four years ago, in 2020, GPT-3 shocked the tech industry. Companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft hurried to challenge OpenAI’s lead. They did (e.g. LaMDA, OPT, MT-NLG) but only a couple of years later. By early 2023, after the success of ChatGPT (which showered OpenAI in attention), they were ready to release GPT-4. Again, companies rushed after OpenAI. One year later, Google has Gemini 1.5, Anthropic has Claude 3, and Meta has Llama 3. OpenAI is about to announce GPT-5 but how far away are its competitors now?

The gap is closing and the race is at an impasse again so everyone—customers, investors, competitors, and analysts—is looking at OpenAI, holding excitement to see whether they can repeat, a third time, a jump to push them one year into the future. That’s the implicit promise of GPT-5; OpenAI’s hope to remain influential in the battle with the most powerful tech companies in history. Imagine the disappointment it would be for the AI world if expectations aren’t met (which insiders like Bill Gates believe may happen).

That’s the vibrant and expectant environment in which GPT-5 is brewing. One wrong step and everyone will jump down OpenAI’s throat. But if GPT-5 exceeds our prospects, it’ll become a key piece in the AI puzzle for the next few years, not just for OpenAI and its rather green business model but also for the people paying for it—investors and users. If that happens, Gemini 1.5, Claude 3, and Llama 3 will fall back into discoursive obscurity and OpenAI will breathe easy once again.

For the sake of clarity, the article is divided into three parts.

First, I’ve written some meta stuff about GPT-5: Whether other companies will have an answer to GPT-5, doubts about the numeration (i.e. GPT-4.5 vs GPT-5), and something I’ve called “the GPT brand trap.” You can skip this part if you just want to know about GPT-5 itself.
Second, I’ve compiled a list of info, data points, predictions, leaks, hints, and other evidence revealing details about GPT-5. This section is focused on quotes from sources (adding my interpretation and analysis when ambiguous), to answer these two questions: When is GPT-5 coming and how good will it be?
Third, I’ve explored—by following breadcrumbs—what we can expect from GPT-5 in the areas we still know nothing about officially (not even leaks): the scaling laws (data, compute, models size) and algorithmic breakthroughs (reasoning, agents, multimodality, etc.) This is all informed speculation, so the juiciest part.

Here’s the exact outline in case you want to skim: