Inside OpenAI’s Rocky Path to GPT-5

The troubles OpenAI has faced in developing GPT-5 point to slowing AI progress across the industry. Researchers believe advances in reinforcement learning will help to overcome that.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Art by Mike Sullivan

OpenAI made waves across the industry in December when it published the results from its tests of artificial intelligence that performs better on tasks when it gets more time and computing power to process them. The results implied ChatGPT customers were about to be blown away by what the new AI could do.

But the euphoria was short-lived.

When OpenAI researchers turned the new AI into a chat-based version called o3 that could respond to instructions from ChatGPT customers, the performance gains the company had published largely vanished, according to two people involved in its development.