GPT-5 Debut: Impressive Moments, Punctuated by Pauses of Caution
In a grand unveiling, OpenAI has introduced GPT-5, the latest iteration of their renowned AI model, ChatGPT. The new version promises significant advancements in general AI intelligence, positioning itself as the smartest, fastest, and most useful model yet from OpenAI.
GPT-5 boasts a unified system with smart routing, intelligently using a real-time router to select the appropriate model or reasoning level for a given task without user intervention. This feature enhances both speed and accuracy, making it an invaluable tool for complex problems and advanced reasoning tasks.
One of the key improvements in GPT-5 is its enhanced reasoning and understanding. It delivers significant advances in accuracy, speed, structured thinking, context recognition, and multi-layered problem solving. GPT-5 excels in complex reasoning tasks, advanced math, coding, and handling ambiguous or context-dependent queries better than its predecessors.
Users can also customise their interactions with GPT-5, choosing from four distinct pre-set personalities (cynic, robot, listener, nerd) to adjust the chatbot’s tone and style, making interactions feel more natural and context-appropriate.
GPT-5 also boasts long-context and multi-tool capabilities, supporting extremely long input/output token limits and excelling at long-running agentic tasks. It reliably chains together dozens of tool calls and follows tool instructions with higher precision, improving automation and real-world task execution.
New API features for developers include a parameter to control response length and detail, offering more flexibility. GPT-5 also sets records on benchmarks for instruction following and tool use, making it especially powerful for complex enterprise applications.
GPT-5 shows state-of-the-art performance across multiple domains such as coding, math, writing, health, and visual perception. It offers a pro version (GPT-5 pro) with extended reasoning capabilities for deeper and more accurate answers.
Leading companies across sectors have integrated GPT-5 to improve workforce productivity and workflow efficiency, with early feedback highlighting increased accuracy, reliability, and speed compared to previous models.
However, the presentation of GPT-5's features for average users lacked accessibility, using technical terms that may not be understood by the general public. Some of the "jokes" during the presentation felt unscripted and awkward, and the presentation did not show sources or explain the methods used to demonstrate GPT-5's features.
Despite these criticisms, the audience for GPT-5's launch demonstrates tremendous interest, with only a few Apple events having significantly more people watching their livestream. OpenAI has made significant progress since the first public version of ChatGPT, with current versions being very powerful and more useful.
GPT-5 is anticipated to have fewer hallucinations compared to prior versions and will provide more context when responding to problematic searches, implementing a feature called "safe completion". It is expected to operate at a PhD level, surpassing GPT-4.
OpenAI is shutting down older models and moving all users to GPT-5. Free users will have their usage capped and will be moved to a less powerful model when they exceed the cap. GPT-5 will be available to all commercial users soon, with enterprise and education access coming later.
However, leading AI scientist Daniel Kokotajlo, a former top engineer at OpenAI, claims that it will still take two or three years for AI to perform much of a developer's job, contradicting OpenAI's claim that GPT-5 is making significant strides. AI 2027, a well-documented and reasoned study on the development path for AI, was authored by Daniel Kokotajlo.
In summary, while the presentation of GPT-5's features could benefit from improved accessibility, the model itself represents a major leap in general AI intelligence. With its fast and deep reasoning models, support for complex multi-turn tasks, customisable interaction styles, and enhanced developer controls, GPT-5 is poised to revolutionise the AI landscape.
Artificial-intelligence advancements in GPT-5 are evident in its fast and deep reasoning models, which excel at complex multi-turn tasks and deliver improvements in accuracy, speed, structured thinking, context recognition, and multi-layered problem solving.
The unified system with smart routing in GPT-5, using a real-time router to select the appropriate model or reasoning level for a given task, is a significant step toward artificial-intelligence technology, enhancing both speed and accuracy.