Sam Altman did a panel discussion at Technische Universität Berlin last week, where he predicted that ChatGPT-5 would be smarter than him — or more accurately, that he wouldn’t be smarter than GPT-5.
He also did a bit with the audience, asking who considered themselves smarter than GPT-4, and who thinks they will also be smarter than GPT-5.
“I don’t think I’m going to be smarter than GPT-5. And I don’t feel sad about it because I think it just means that we’ll be able to use it to do incredible things. And you know like we want more science to get done. We want more, we want to enable researchers to do things they couldn’t do before. This is the history of, this is like the long history of humanity.”
The whole thing seemed rather prepared, especially since he forced it into a response to a fairly unrelated question. The host asked about his expectations when partnering with research organizations, and he replied “Uh… There are many reasons I am excited about AI. …The single thing I’m most excited about is what this is going to do for scientific discovery.”
He didn’t answer the host’s question at any point during his reply, and he also didn’t give any details or explanation regarding his comment. What does it mean for GPT-5 to be smarter than Sam Altman?
Does it mean GPT-5 will be trained on data covering in-depth knowledge of more subjects than Altman has experience with? That’s probably already the case with GPT-4 but people don’t describe it as smart because it’s so bad at following instructions, retaining context, and revising its responses.
So, can we expect GPT-5 to improve in this area? It shouldn’t be impossible — my experience with DeepSeek, for example, has been much more positive in this area. If I ask for no more than 100 words, two bullet-point lists, and information taken from a certain link, it actually delivers.
Then, when I ask it to add an extra section summarizing an additional webpage I provide — I get what I asked for. I’ve never been able to achieve this kind of smooth and accurate operation with GPT-4, and I’m not even asking for anything complicated.
These are the kind of things I consider when assessing how “smart” I think an AI model is but it’s impossible to know what kind of criteria Altman judges by. He keeps talking about science and research — he even mentioned curing cancer at one point — but it’s hard to see how ChatGPT fits into such things.
I can see how artificial intelligence as a whole might contribute, but an LLM? The official site for ChatGPT describes it as a brainstorming partner, a meeting summarizer, a code generator, and a way to search the web. Which of these features will meaningfully help a research scientist dealing with questions no human has the answers to yet?
If Altman has thoughts or answers on these topics, he isn’t sharing them. He just sticks to sweeping statements that only sound impressive until you realize you have no idea what he actually means in practical terms.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.