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\t\t\tIllustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins \/ Futurism. Source: Andrew Harnik \/ Getty Images\n\t<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a little over three years since the launch of the first commercially-available large language model (LLM) chatbot, OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT. And though the AI model has certainly made performance gains since it came online, the lackluster performance of recent iterations hasn\u2019t helped the perception that LLMs are hitting a plateau<\/a>.<\/p>\n Case in point, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently conceded that the company had \u201cscrewed up\u201d the language capabilities of its latest chatbot iteration, GPT-5.2.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we just screwed that up,\u201d Altman said at a developer town hall<\/a> on Monday. \u201cWe will make future versions of GPT 5.x hopefully much better at writing than 4.5 was.\u201d<\/p>\n Continuing, Altman said that the company chose to focus on ChatGPT\u2019s technical capabilities, perhaps to the detriment of its human-language performance. <\/p>\n \u201cWe did decide, and I think for good reason, to put most of our effort in 5.2 into making it super good at intelligence, reasoning, coding, engineering, that kind of thing,\u201d Altman said. \u201cAnd we have limited bandwidth here, and sometimes we focus on one thing and neglect another.\u201d<\/p>\n The admission raises a high-stakes question: whether frontier AI models can continue to excel at tasks across the board, or if proficiency in one domain will start to come at the expense of a broader skill set. <\/p>\n As Search Engine Journal points out<\/a>, the release of GPT-5.2 came with a huge emphasis on technical tasks like coding and formatting spreadsheets. Compared to past iterations, there was scarce mention of any writing or creative work at all, a pivot which has left many non-technical users feeling like ChatGPT is hitting a wall.<\/p>\n