Sam Altman Says the GPT-5 Haters Got It All Wrong

OpenAI’s August launch of its GPT-5 large language model was somewhat of a disaster. There were glitches during the livestream, with the model generating charts with obviously inaccurate numbers. In a Reddit AMA with OpenAI employees, users complained that the new model wasn’t friendly, and called for the company to restore the previous version. Most of all, critics griped that GPT-5 fell short of the stratospheric expectations that OpenAI has been juicing for years. Promised as a game changer, GPT-5 might have indeed played the game better. But it was still the same game.

Skeptics seized on the moment to proclaim the end of the AI boom. Some even predicted the beginning of another AI Winter. “GPT-5 was the most hyped AI system of all time,” full-time bubble-popper Gary Marcus told me during his packed schedule of victory laps. “It was supposed to ...