ChatGPT-5: The World Won’t End with a Bang but an Acronym

ChatGPT-5, the highly anticipated next iteration of OpenAI’s conversational AI model, has been the subject of speculation and rumors, with claims of it bridging the gap between human-like conversations and artificial general intelligence.

• OpenAI is actively working on updates for GPT-4 with the goal of providing it and ChatGPT-5 with a plugin to access the live internet for specific tasks.
• ChatGPT-5 is speculated to bring us closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI), although it may not achieve full AGI status itself.

Just after the ChatGPT-4 announcement, rumors started making their way through the grapevine: ChatGPT-5 is under development and is coming sooner than we think. OpenAI kept their cards close to their chests and neither refuted nor confirmed the claims. That is until Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, took the stage at a recent MIT event, and shut down these rumors during his discussion of the open letter. The open letter in question here calls for the pause of the development of AI systems that are stronger than GPT-4 for at least six months and has garnered, as of writing this article, 31,810 signatures. He noted that a previous version of the letter claimed that GPT-5 is in training: something categorically false.

Making AGI Status

Okay, so ChatGPT-5 is yet to be confirmed. But speculations are flying around like mosquitoes. But Altman did confirm that they are working on updates for GPT-4. In fact, the chatbot now supports multimodal input: you can feed it information via several input methods, including text and images. The developers have also improved the AI’s response. But in an unexpected (yeah, right!) turn of events, they want to provide the AI with a plugin of sorts so it can access the live internet for specific tasks.

And guess what! That is also a goal for ChatGPT-5. Considering the massive updates for GPT-4, it is safe to assume that it won’t be long before this AI reaches artificial general intelligence (AGI) status. It may not be with GPT-5, but perhaps with an iteration in the somewhat distant future.

AGI?

For now, an AGI is still a type of hypothetical intelligent agent. The concept behind it is that it can learn to accomplish any intellectual task performed by anyone or anything, human or animal. It can reason, represent knowledge, plan, learn, communicate, and, if necessary, integrate these skills to complete any given goal. And its traits extend to include sensing (e.g., seeing, hearing, etc.) and acting (e.g., moving objects). Basically, the AGI would be a literal artificial brain, indistinguishable from humans. How fun! Some people expect ChatGPT-5 to be close enough to an AGI to fully bridge the gap between human-like conversation and AI.

Are We Jumping the Gun?

Are we really ready for ChatGPT-5? The world is ripping itself apart with war, famine, and death. Can we withstand the monumental impact of an AGI-like product? Not too long ago, Altman himself stood in front of a Senate subcommittee practically begging for AI regulations. Whether that was performative or genuine is neither here nor there. The point is that you’d think people would heed the warning coming straight from the horse’s mouth. The Laissez-faire approach has already screwed up the economy, do we really want it to screw up everything else?

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