OpenAI’s co-founder and CEO Sam Altman declares that ChatGPT has reached its lowest intelligence level and pledges significant investment in AI’s future.
Altman engaged in an extensive Q&A session at Stanford University, where he discussed the future of generative AI and chatbots. When asked about the reported operating costs of GPT-3 and the anticipated increases for GPT-4, Altman refrained from disclosing specific figures but addressed concerns about escalating costs and their sustainability over time. He also emphasized the importance of providing powerful tools and allowing users to innovate with them.
The host posed the question “Does the cost keep growing with each subsequent [version], and does it keep growing multiplicatively? How do you capitalize on that?
“I think giving people really capable tools and letting them figure out how they’re going to use this to build the future is a super good thing to do, and is super valuable, and I am super willing to bet on the ingenuity of you all and everybody else in the world to figure out what to do about this,” Altman explained.
“There is probably some more business-minded person than me at OpenAI somewhere that is worried about how much we’re spending, but I kind of don’t,” he jokes. He even admitted that the money is going into a not-great product. When pressed on burning “$520 million of cash last year” for running the “phenomenal ChatGPT”, Altman describes the company’s LLM as “mildly embarrassing at best”.
“GPT-4 is the dumbest model any of you will ever have to use again by a lot,” Altman says. “It’s important to ship early and often and we believe in iterative deployment. If we go build AGI in a basement and then the world is kind of blissfully walking blindfolded along, I don’t think that makes us very good neighbors,” Altman adds, suggesting society “co-evolve” with the technology.
Later in the conversation, Altman asserts that he can confidently state that GPT-5 will exhibit significantly greater intelligence than GPT-4, and he anticipates a similar progression with GPT-6, highlighting the typical trajectory of AI advancement.
However, there may not be a lengthy wait for a significant new development from the company. Reports indicate that OpenAI is poised to unveil a competitor to Google’s search engine, potentially as soon as next week.
This development aligns closely with both Google’s IO event scheduled for May 14 and the anticipated reveal of Apple’s new iPad lineup on May 7. Speculation suggests that Apple’s tablets could receive an increased focus on AI, potentially integrating the new M4 chip.
