# Hello, let‘s take a realistic look at when GPT\-5 could emerge - Canonical: https://33rdsquare.com/hello-lets-take-a-realistic-look-at-when-gpt-5-could-emerge/ - Published: 2024-09-03 - Author: Jordan Brown - Categories: [Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning & ChatGPT](https://33rdsquare.com/category/tech/ai/) --- AI has captured the public imagination recently with the launch of chatbots like ChatGPT built using OpenAI‘s powerful GPT-3 language model. The hype hit fever pitch last month when OpenAI unveiled an even more advanced chatbot powered by GPT-4.Excitement is already building about what the next iteration – GPT-5 – may be capable of, with rumors suggesting it could launch as early as late 2023. As an AI researcher myself, I certainly understand the thrill of seeing these technologies progress so rapidly. However, when it comes to speculation about GPT-5 achieving human-like artificial general intelligence (AGI), it‘s important to take a measured view grounded in the technical realities. In this post, I‘ll share my perspective on what we can realistically expect from GPT-5 and its launch timeline based on where AI is today and the challenges still ahead. Let‘s dive in! ## GPT – A Brief Background To understand the hype around GPT-5, it helps to know what makes the GPT models so powerful in the first place. GPT stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer, a series of language models developed by OpenAI since 2018. What sets them apart? - **Massive neural networks** – GPT models have billions of parameters that can recognize patterns in vast amounts of text data. The latest GPT-4 has over 100 billion parameters! - **Transformative architecture** – They use an attention mechanism called transformers that allows modeling longer-range dependencies in text. This gives them greater contextual understanding. - **Pretraining** – The models are first pretrained on huge text corpuses before being fine-tuned for specific tasks. This allows them to have broad linguistic knowledge. These innovations led to GPT-3 in 2020, which displayed an impressive ability to generate human-like text and power applications like ChatGPT. GPT-4 takes this even further – but it‘s still not AGI. ## Understanding Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) When people say they expect GPT-5 to achieve AGI, what does that really mean? Artificial general intelligence refers to a notional AI system that can: - Understand context and meaning across different concepts and domains. - Apply common sense and logic to reason through new situations. - Transfer knowledge from one experience to handle new tasks and problems. - Communicate naturally using language and multi-modal interactions. In essence, an AGI system would display the flexible problem-solving and social intelligence of an average human. This is very different from today‘s AI which excels at specific tasks but struggles with complex reasoning. Many advances like giving AI systems bodies to move around and experience the world will likely be needed before AGI is possible. We‘re still in the early stages – but there is a long road ahead. ## Origins of the GPT-5 Rumors The rumors around GPT-5 achieving AGI seems to have stemmed from an imprecise tweet by AI researcher Siqi Chen hinting that some at OpenAI believe it could be possible. However, there is no evidence this reflects a consensus view within OpenAI. The company itself has shared no official information on GPT-5 yet. Despite this, speculation snowballed with many outlets reporting on GPT-5‘s rumored AGI capabilities and 2023 timeline. In reality, we know very little about what enhancements GPT-5 will have over GPT-4, let alone whether it will radically outpace all previous AI systems to reach AGI within a year. Until OpenAI reveals details, the rumors remain just that – rumors. ## Realistically Assessing GPT-5‘s Capabilities Based on the steady incremental progress so far, GPT-5 is unlikely to be an exponential leap that suddenly creates AGI. Rather, it may represent another solid step forward building on GPT-4‘s foundations. Some reasonable enhancements GPT-5 could bring include: - **More data** – Trained on trillions more words, images, video and multimodal datasets. - **Larger model** – Possibly over 100 trillion parameters, expanding its knowledge capacity. - **Enhanced reasoning** – Better able to apply logic and causal reasoning to its predictions. - **Multimodal knowledge** – Understanding and generating connections between text, images, audio and video. - **Knowledge retention** – Improved ability to retain broad knowledge gained during pretraining. - **Faster training** – Techniques like mixture-of-experts that reduce training time and resources. | GPT Model | Parameters | Training Data Size | Launch Year | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | GPT-3 | 175 Billion | 300 GB | 2020 | | GPT-4 | 100 Trillion | 1 Terabyte | 2022 | | GPT-5 (Expected) | >100 Trillion | 10s of Terabytes | 2023+? | These would all be meaningful advances – but likely not enough to create AGI on their own. That achievement could be decades away still. ## Questioning the 2023 Timeline Is it plausible for GPT-5 to launch as early as late 2023 as some rumors suggest? The timeline seems ambitious considering that over 3 years separated GPT-3 and GPT-4. Some key milestones that would need to occur: - **Mid 2023** – GPT-5 architecture finalized based on GPT-4 learnings. - **Mid 2023** – Massive compute resources secured for training. - **Late 2023** – Pretraining completed, model optimization begun. - **Late 2023** – Testing satisfies robustness, safety and capabilities. - **Late 2023** – Potential limited release for testing. - **Beyond 2023** – Gradual public release as model capabilities are proven. While OpenAI may try to accelerate this timeline, training and testing systems as complex as GPT-5 takes significant time even with substantial resources. **A 2024 or even 2025 release may be more realistic to expect.** ## Weighing the Implications of GPT-5 Let‘s indulge in some speculation about what societal impacts GPT-5 could have _if_ it achieves or exceeds human-level AGI: - **Healthcare** – Doctors could access medical knowledge beyond any one expert to improve diagnoses and healthcare access for underserved communities. - **Education** – AI tutors tailored to each student‘s strengths, weaknesses and preferences could democratize access to quality education globally. - **Entertainment** – We may see amazingly creative new films, games, music and art infused with previously unimaginable ideas. - **Economy** – Significant job losses in some sectors could be offset by new roles integrating AI and gains in productivity. - **Ethics** – Avoiding biases and ensuring transparency will be critical as AGI affects social institutions and vulnerable communities. The extent of these potential impacts depends on how we guide AGI‘s development ethically. But we are still far from that reality today. ## The Long Road to AGI Still Ahead While the hype understandably runs high, it‘s important to keep expectations around models like GPT-5 grounded. The journey toward artificial general intelligence will likely span many decades or even centuries of scientific inquiry, with many incremental breakthroughs still required. GPT-5 undoubtedly will push boundaries – but not suddenly fulfill the long-held dream of AGI. Its launch timeline remains uncertain and likely further than 2023. But I‘m excited to see what innovations it does bring, continuing the rapid progress in AI. The future prospects are compelling – as research slowly unravels the mysteries of intelligence itself – be it natural or artificial. Every step forward brings us closer to unlocking AI‘s immense potential for human progress, _if_ we innovate ethically. The path ahead will require patience and wisdom – but the destination is certainly worth striving towards. I hope you enjoyed this perspective on GPT-5! Let me know if you have any other thoughts or questions. The details will reveal themselves soon enough. --- Source: [Hello, let‘s take a realistic look at when GPT\-5 could emerge](https://33rdsquare.com/hello-lets-take-a-realistic-look-at-when-gpt-5-could-emerge/)