If you’re burnt out around the buzz around generative artificial intelligenceyou are not alone. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said GPT-4, his company’s latest and greatest AI model, it actually kind of sucks in an interview with Lex Fridman published on Monday. In fact, Altman hopes that GPT-5 will live up to all the hype.
“I think it kind of sucks.” Altman said when asked about GPT-4 and its most impressive capabilities. “I think our job is to live a few years in the future and remember that the tools we have now will be useless when we look back at them, and that’s how we make sure the future is better.”
Fridman, who had just finished praising GPT-4, was surprised by Altman’s comments. Altman used this question to say that he is much more excited about GPT-5, or whatever the next model is called. OpenAI’s CEO noted that his company will release a novel version of ChatGPT next year, but did not specify what it will be called. Altman says this next model will be a similar step forward as GPT-4.
“Look, I don’t want to downplay the achievement of GPT-4, but I don’t want to overstate it either,” Altman said. “And I think at this point where we’re on the exponential curve, relatively soon we’ll be looking back at GPT-4 just like we’re looking back at GPT-3 right now.”
Altman described a “glimmer of something amazing” in GPT-4, but noted that its best employ case is often in a brainstorming session. OpenAI’s CEO noted that ChatGPT is rarely useful for complicated, multi-step problems. When it works, it’s magic, but such cases are few and far between.
There has been great speculation about the next OpenAI model. Every day on X, people try to predict when exactly GPT-5, GPT 4.5 or GPT-4.5 Turbo will drop. Everyone is waiting for an AI model that will actually make our lives better. People were especially excited when Bing mysteriously cached search results for GPT-4.5 Turbo on the OpenAI website, although the company says it’s not them and no upcoming releases are planned.
According to an interview with CTO Mira Murati, the only model we have some clarity on is Sora, OpenAI’s text-to-video generator, which could arrive in just a few months. The model, which may have included some tasteful nudity, was teased in Februaryand shocked the world with realistic films.
The GPT-4 model that supposedly “kinda sucks” has resulted in OpenAI having 100 million weekly users, and Valued at $80 billion.
