OpenAI's GPT-5 launch hits bumps

OpenAI's GPT -5 has landed with a thud despite strong benchmark scores and praise from early testers.Why it matters: A lot rides on every launch of a major new large language model, since training these programs is a massive endeavor that can require months or years and billions of dollars.Driving the news: When OpenAI released GPT-5 last week, CEO Sam Altman promised the new model would give even free users of ChatGPT access to the equivalent of Ph.D-level intelligence.But users quickly complained that the new model was struggling with basic tasks and lamented that they couldn't just stick with older models, such as GPT-4o.Unhappy ChatGPTers took to social media, posting examples of GPT-5 making simple mistakes in math and geography and mocking the new model.Altman went into damage-control mode, acknowledging some early glitches, restoring the availability of earlier models and promising to increase access to the higher-level "reasoning" mode that allows GPT-5 to produce its best results.Between the lines: There are several likely reasons for the underwhelming reaction to GPT-5.GPT-5 isn't one model, but a collection of models including one that answers very quickly and others that use "reasoning" — additional computing time, to answer better. The non-reasoning model doesn't appear to be nearly as much of a leap as the reasoning part.As Altman explained in a series of posts, early glitches in the model's rollout meant some queries weren't being properly routed to the reasoning model.GPT-5 appears to shine brightest at coding — particularly at taking an idea and turning it into a website or app. That's not a use case that generates examples tailor-made to go viral the way previous OpenAI releases, like its recent improved image generator, did. Zoom out: GPT-5 took a lot longer to arrive than OpenAI originally expected and promised. In the meantime the company's leaders — like their competitors — kept upping the ante on just how golden the AI age is going to be.The more they have promised the moon, the greater the public disappointment when a milestone release proves more down-to-earth. What they're saying: In posts on X and in a Reddit AMA on Friday, Altman promised that users' complaints were being addressed. "The autoswitcher broke and was out of commission for a chunk of the day, and the result was GPT-5 seemed way dumber," Altman said on Friday. "Also, we are making some interventions to how the decision boundary works that should help you get the right model more often."Altman pledged to increase access to reasoning capabilities and to restore the option of using older models. OpenAI also plans to change ChatGPT's interface to make it clearer which model is being used in any given response. Altman also acknowledged in a later post recent stories about people becoming overly attached to AI models and said the company has been studying this trend over the past year. "It feels different and stronger than the kinds of attachment people have had to previous kinds of technology," he said, adding that "if a user is in a mentally fragile state and prone to delusion, we do not want the AI to reinforce that."Meanwhile, Critics seized on the disappointments as vindication for their longstanding skepticism that generative AI is a precursor to greater-than-human intelligence."My work here is truly done," longtime genAI critic Gary Marcus wrote on X. "Nobody with intellectual integrity can still believe that pure scaling will get us to AGI."Yes, but: OpenAI's leaders argue that their scaling strategy is still reaping big dividends."Our scaling laws still hold," the company's COO, Brad Lightcap, told Big Technology's Alex Kantrowitz."Empirically, there's no reason to believe that there's any kind of diminishing return on pre-training. And on post-training" — the technique that supports models' newer "reasoning" capabilities — "we're really just starting to scratch the surface of that new paradigm."Go deeper: Ina spoke with ABC News and NPR's Here and Now about GPT-5's bumpy rollout.

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