- The OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, said the GPT-5 tests left him scared in a recent interview
- Compared GPT-5 with the Manhattan project
- Warned that the rapid advance of AI is happening without sufficient supervision
Operai’s chief Sam Altman has painted a portrait of GPT – 5 that reads more like a thriller than a product launch. In a recent episode of the past weekend with the Podcast Theo von, he described the experience of testing the free -sized tones model that evoke more skepticism than any alarm that seems to want the listeners to listen.
Altman said GPT-5 “feels very fast,” while telling moments when he felt very nervous. Despite being the driving force behind the development of GPT-5, Altman said that during some sessions, he looked at GPT-5 and compared it to the Manhattan project.
Altman also issued an abrasing accusation of current governance, which suggests “there are no adults in the room” and that supervision structures have been left behind the development of AI. It is a strange way to sell a product that promises serious jumps in artificial general intelligence. Increasing potential risks is one thing, but acting as if it had no control over how GPT-5 works feels false.
CEO of Operai Sam Altman: “It feels very fast.” – “While I tried GPT5, I got scared” – “Looking at him thinking: What have we done … as in the Manhattan project” – “There are no adults in the room” of R/ChatgPT
Analysis: Existential fears of GPT-5
What Spooked Altman is not entirely clear either. Altman did not go into technical details. To invoke the Manhattan project is another type of exaggerated analogy. The signage of an irreversible and potentially catastrophic change and global bets seems strange as a comparison with a sophisticated car. To say that they built something that they do not understand completely causes Openai to seem reckless or incompetent.
GPT-5 is supposed to leave soon, and there are clues that will expand far beyond GPT-4 skills. The “digital mind” described in Altman’s comments could represent a change in how the people who build AI consider their work, but this type of messianic or apocalyptic projection seems nonsense. The public discourse on AI has alternated mainly between breathless optimism and existential fear, but something in the middle seems more appropriate.
This is not the first time that Altman publicly recognizes his discomfort with AI’s arms race. He has been registered by saying that AI could “go quite badly”, and that Operai must act responsible while sending useful products. But while GPT-5 will almost surely arrive with better tools, more friendly interfaces and a slightly more swampy logo, the central question he raises is power.
The next generation of AI, if it is faster, more intelligent and more intuitive, will be given even more responsibility. And that would be a bad idea based on Altman’s comments. And even if you are exaggerating, I don’t know if that is the type of company that should decide how that power is implemented.
