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Man, Sam Altman’s really been on a podcast streak, hasn’t he? OpenAI released a new, wide-ranging interview on all the company’s latest interests and issues.
In the interview, CEO Sam Altman laid out a roadmap focused on unifying the user experience, starting with the release of GPT-5 this summer.
What’s GPT-5? Have you used AI long enough to remember when ChatGPT was just… ChatGPT? No model picker, no juggling o4-mini-high versus GPT-o3 Pro, just one box to type in? Well, OpenAI is finally fixing its confusing product lineup, and GPT 5 will basically be a simplification (reunification?) of ChatGPT’s myriad models into one streamlined UI.
Here’s the plan to end the model mess:
- Altman said the next flagship model will “probably” arrive sometime this summer.
- He admitted the current state of model choice is a “whole mess.” The goal is to get back to a simple progression (GPT-5, GPT-6) and ditch the complex variants (4, 4o, o4, oh for crying out loud!).
- The future vision is a unified model that can handle everything seamlessly—from quick questions to complex, multi-step tasks using “reasoning” and agent-like tools like Deep Research. No more switching modes.
Altman explained this shift is happening because AI is moving beyond just giving instant answers. He’s been surprised to find that for hard problems, users are “surprisingly willing to wait for a great answer.” This insight is driving the development of more thoughtful “reasoning models” that work more like a human expert, taking time to think before responding.
Our take: This simplification is a clear play to win over the mainstream user who doesn’t want to learn a complex menu of AI options. By creating a single, smarter ChatGPT, they’re making it easier to deliver on their bigger ambitions—like the agentic AI that can act as your personal assistant.
The long-term projects we’ve heard about before, like the massive Stargate supercomputer and the new hardware with Jony Ive, are all pieces of this puzzle, building the infrastructure and interface for this unified AI future.
Get ready for a simpler, more powerful ChatGPT that does the thinking for you—both in its answers and in choosing the right tool for the job.
Something to watch for: OpenAI says new, smarter models could increase “novice uplift”, or the ability for novices to do more dangerous things with high powered AI.
Editor’s note: This content originally ran in our sister publication, The Neuron. To read more from The Neuron, sign up for its newsletter here.