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Slaughterhouse GPT-5

Silicon Valley is adjusting its expectations yet again, after OpenAI’s latest model turned out to be more of an upgrade than a great leap forward. “It’s not a disappointment in the sense that it won’t actually be better,” said one A.I. researcher. “But a disappointment relative to what people were expecting.”

Sam Altman
In the demo, Sam Altman hinted that OpenAI is “discovering new paradigms,” but it’s unclear what those are, or whether they are in some way present in GPT-5. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Ian Krietzberg
August 7, 2025

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For all the feverish excitement surrounding today’s release of GPT-5, the latest and most advanced OpenAI model seems to represent more of an incremental update than a paradigm-shifting breakthrough. At a press briefing, C.E.O. Sam Altman called GPT-5 a “major upgrade” that serves as a “significant step along the path to A.G.I.,” or artificial general intelligence, an entirely hypothetical technology. At another point he referred to it as “very A.G.I.-like.” Obviously, we’re not quite there—and it’s not clear that we ever will be.