Following the release of GPT-4o in May, OpenAI announced that it is already training its “next frontier model” that the company hopes will deliver “next-level capabilities” in its continuing efforts to build the world’s first Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a (still hypothetical) generative compute system able to perform a wide variety of cognitive tasks with human-level accuracy.
While achieving that AGI goal remains to be seen, GPT-5 is expected to vastly outperform OpenAI’s currently available models in terms of both complexity and efficiency, offering improvements in its natural language processing, content generation abilities, a larger knowledge base, and enhanced reasoning skills. Claude 3.5 Sonnet’s current lead in the benchmark performance race could soon evaporate.
Mira Murati: GPT-3 was toddler-level, GPT-4 was a smart high schooler and the next gen, to be released in a year and a half, will be PhD-level pic.twitter.com/jyNSgO9Kev
— Tsarathustra (@tsarnick) June 20, 2024
During a recent interview with Dartmouth Engineering, OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, described the capability gap between GPT-4 and GPT-5. “If you look at the trajectory of improvement, systems like GPT-3 were maybe toddler-level intelligence,” Murati said. “And then systems like GPT-4 are more like smart high-schooler intelligence. And then, in the next couple of years, we’re looking at Ph.D. intelligence for specific tasks. Things are changing and improving pretty rapidly.”
Though few firm details have been released to date, here’s everything that’s been rumored so far.
When will GPT-5 be released?
OpenAI has continued a rapid rate of progress on its LLMs. GPT-4 debuted on March 14, 2023, which came just four months after GPT-3.5 launched alongside ChatGPT. OpenAI has yet to set a specific release date for GPT-5, though rumors have circulated online that the new model could arrive as soon as late 2024.
i have been told that gpt5 is scheduled to complete training this december and that openai expects it to achieve agi.
which means we will all hotly debate as to whether it actually achieves agi.
which means it will.
— Siqi Chen (@blader) March 27, 2023
Availability
Currently all three commercially available versions of GPT — 3.5, 4 and 4o — are available in ChatGPT at the free tier. A ChatGPT Plus subscription garners users significantly increased rate limits when working with the newest GPT-4o model as well as access to additional tools like the Dall-E image generator. There’s no word yet on whether GPT-5 will be made available to free users upon its eventual launch.
It should be noted that spinoff tools like Bing Chat are being based on the latest models, with Bing Chat secretly launching with GPT-4 before that model was even announced. We could see a similar thing happen with GPT-5 when we eventually get there, but we’ll have to wait and see how things roll out.
Will GPT-5 achieve AGI?
Probably not. We’ve been expecting robots with human-level reasoning capabilities since the mid-1960s. And like flying cars and a cure for cancer, the promise of achieving AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) has perpetually been estimated by industry experts to be a few years to decades away from realization. Of course that was before the advent of ChatGPT in 2022, which set off the genAI revolution and has led to exponential growth and advancement of the technology over the past four years.
Last year, Shane Legg, Google DeepMind’s co-founder and chief AGI scientist, told Time Magazine that he estimates there to be a 50% chance that AGI will be developed by 2028. Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, is even more bullish, claiming last August that “human-level” AI could arrive in the next two to three years. For his part, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argues that AGI could be achieved within the next half-decade.
Interesting find: One year ago, forecasters estimated AGI to be ready by 2057.
Given the rapid pace of AI these past few weeks, AGI is now expected to be ready by October 2032. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/vHp6izeBAI
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) March 28, 2023
Pushback to GPT-5
The development of GPT-5 is already underway, but there’s already been a move to halt its progress. A petition signed by over a thousand public figures and tech leaders has been published, requesting a pause in development on anything beyond GPT-4. Significant people involved in the petition include Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Andrew Yang, and many more.
The eye of the petition is clearly targeted at GPT-5 as concerns over the technology continue to grow among governments and the public at large.
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