Sam Altman seems to be giving interviews one after the other. On Thursday, June 19, the CEO of OpenAI appeared on the company’s podcast featuring an extended conversation with host Andrew Mayne. In the pilot episode, which lasted for about 40 minutes, Altman laid out a roadmap focused on offering a unified experience with the release of GPT-5, which is slated for this summer.
When it comes to GPT-5, OpenAI seems to be working on a solution to unify its array of model offerings. Based on Altman’s interaction, the AI powerhouse is working towards fixing the company’s confusing product line-up with GPT-5. Reportedly, the latest generation of GPT will be essentially a simplification of ChatGPT’s diverse models into one streamlined user interface.
Talking about OpenAI’s next frontier AI model, Altman said that it will probably arrive this summer. The CEO also admitted that the current state of the model choice is a ‘whole mess’.
He stated that the goal is to get back to a simple progression (GPT-5, GPT-6) and do away with the complex variants inferring to models, that is, GPT-4, GPT-4o, etc. Altman explained that the future goal is to develop a unified model that can handle everything seamlessly, from instant questions to complex, multi-step tasks using reasoning and agent-like tools such as Deep Research. This would essentially eliminate the need for switching modes within the ChatGPT interface.
Altman also said that there is an internal debate going on over the naming strategy for the upcoming model to convey clarity. He even briefly mentioned Elon Musk, and how the SpaceX chief tried using his influence in the government to unfairly compete.
Altman said that a shift towards delivering a unified user experience was taking place because AI has evolved from being a bot that gives instant answers. He said that he is surprised to find that for hard problems, users are willing to wait for a ‘great answer’. According to him, this insight is driving the development of more thoughtful reasoning models that could perform like a human expert, essentially taking its own time before answering.
This is Altman’s second podcast interview this week. On the Uncapped podcast that was uploaded to YouTube on June 17, Altman said that Meta offered his employees $100 million bonuses to recruit them as a part of the social media giant’s recent efforts to ramp up its AI strategy.
Average Rating