I’m having a look out at Alcatraz Island from a Mediterranean eating place in San Francisco with hundred-dollar fish entrées at the menu. As I make small communicate with different newshounds, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman jumps in the course of the door on my left. Altman’s having a look down at his naked iPhone to turn us all one thing, and an intrusive concept slips out of my mouth: “No telephone case is a daring selection.”
In fact, I instantly understand that the billionaire CEO of OpenAI, who employs Apple veteran Jony Ive, cares extra about keeping the iPhone’s unique design than the $1,000 it prices to exchange one.
“Pay attention, we’re going to send a tool this is going to be so stunning,” says Altman, regarding OpenAI and Ive’s approaching AI tool. “When you put a case over it, I can individually hunt you down,” he jokes.
Altman has amassed kind of a dozen tech newshounds to enroll in him and different OpenAI executives for an on-the-record dinner (and off-the-record dessert). The evening raises extra questions than it solutions.
As an example, why is Nick Turley, the VP of ChatGPT, kindly passing me a lamb skewer only a week after launching GPT-5? Is that this to inspire me to jot down great issues about OpenAI’s greatest AI style release but, which was once reasonably disappointing given the years of hype round it?
In contrast to GPT-4, which a ways outpaced opponents and challenged expectancies of what AI can do, GPT-5 plays kind of on par with fashions from Google and Anthropic. OpenAI even introduced again GPT-4o and ChatGPT’s style picker, after a number of customers expressed issues over GPT-5’s tone and its style router.
However during the evening, it turns into transparent to me that this dinner is set OpenAI’s long run past GPT-5. OpenAI’s executives give the impact that AI style launches are much less necessary than they have been when GPT-4 introduced in 2023. In any case, OpenAI is an overly other corporate now, inquisitive about upending legacy avid gamers in seek, shopper {hardware}, and endeavor tool.
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Altman says OpenAI’s incoming CEO of packages, Fidji Simo, will oversee a couple of shopper apps outdoor of ChatGPT — ones OpenAI has but to release. Simo is slated to begin paintings at OpenAI in only some weeks, and she or he may finally end up overseeing the release of an AI-powered browser that OpenAI is reportedly creating to compete with Chrome.
Altman suggests OpenAI would even believe purchasing Chrome — most probably an be offering that may be taken extra significantly than Perplexity’s bid — must it grow to be to be had. “If Chrome is in reality going to promote, we must check out it,” he says prior to having a look in any respect folks and asking: “Is it if truth be told going to promote? I believed it wasn’t gonna occur.”
Simo additionally may finally end up operating an AI-powered social media app — one thing the OpenAI CEO has mentioned he’s fascinated by exploring. If truth be told, Altman says there’s “not anything” inspiring to him about the best way AI is used on social media as of late, including that he’s fascinated by “whether or not or now not it’s imaginable to construct a far cooler roughly social enjoy with AI.”
Whilst Turley and Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s COO, in large part give the ground to Altman, consuming wine along the opposite seated visitors, Altman additionally confirms experiences that OpenAI plans to again a brain-computer interface startup, Merge Labs, to compete with Elon Musk’s Neuralink. (“We’ve now not finished that deal but; I would love us to.”)
How intertwined that corporate will likely be with OpenAI’s fashions and units continues to be observed. Altman describes it most effective as a “an organization that we’d spend money on.”
For all of the communicate of browsers and mind chips, even though, the elephant within the room stays GPT-5’s tough reception. Sooner or later, the dialog circles again to the style that has precipitated our workforce dinner within the first position.
Turley and Altman say they’ve discovered so much from the enjoy.
“I legitimately simply concept we screwed that up,” says Altman on deprecating GPT-4o with out telling customers. Altman says OpenAI will give customers a extra transparent “transition length” when deprecating AI fashions someday.
Turley additionally says OpenAI is already rolling out a brand new replace to make GPT-5’s responses “hotter,” however now not sycophantic, such that it received’t beef up destructive behaviors in customers.
“GPT-5 was once simply very to the purpose. I really like that. I take advantage of the robotic character — I’m German, you realize, no matter,” says Turley. “However many of us don’t, they usually in reality like the truth that ChatGPT would if truth be told take a look at in with you.”
It’s a mild steadiness for OpenAI to strike, particularly for the reason that some customers have evolved dependencies on ChatGPT. Altman says OpenAI believes that lower than 1% of ChatGPT customers have dangerous relationships with the chatbot — which might nonetheless be tens of thousands and thousands of other folks.
Turley says OpenAI has labored with psychological well being professionals to expand a rubric to judge GPT-5’s solutions, making sure that the AI style will ward off on dangerous behaviors.
That mentioned, it kind of feels that GPT-5 hasn’t harm OpenAI’s industry. If truth be told, Altman says OpenAI’s API visitors doubled inside of 48 hours of GPT-5’s release, and the corporate is successfully “out of GPUs” because of all of the call for. Cursor and different AI coding assistants have since made GPT-5 their default AI fashions.
In some ways, the evening’s contradictions — disappointing launches, record-breaking utilization — mirror OpenAI’s unusual truth presently.
Given OpenAI’s bets — and others the corporate is making round knowledge facilities, robotics, and effort — Altman obviously has ambitions of operating a far larger corporate than simply the ChatGPT maker. The overall shape may just glance one thing like Google’s father or mother Alphabet, however possibly even broader.
Because the evening winds down, it turns into transparent we aren’t amassed to mirror on GPT-5 in any respect. We’re being pitched on an organization that’s desperate to outgrow its well-known and arguable product.
It sort of feels most probably that OpenAI will move public to fulfill its huge capital calls for as a part of that image. In preparation, I feel Altman needs to hone his dating with the media. However he additionally needs OpenAI to get to a spot the place it’s not outlined by way of its absolute best AI style.
