Democracy Dies in Darkness
Opinion

How ‘Altman’s Pause’ could knock the AI industry off course

An underwhelming GPT-5 release points to bigger problems ahead for the tech revolution.

5 min
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in February. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)
By

James Pethokoukis is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The Conservative Futurist.”

OpenAI’s latest chatbot model, GPT-5, is an improved artificial-intelligence tool: faster, more capable, more accurate. But it’s not the technomagic wand some AI optimists hoped for. The leap to “superintelligence,” the prize behind $400 billion in Big Tech investment this year, now looks later rather than sooner, if even possible.

What readers are saying

The comments reflect a strong concern about the potential disruption AI could cause in traditional job markets, with many expressing skepticism about the benefits outweighing the drawbacks. Several commenters argue for the necessity of regulation to prevent negative societal... Show more
This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.
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