{"id":80564,"date":"2025-08-19T06:47:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T06:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/80564\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T06:47:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T06:47:11","slug":"sam-altman-admits-openai-totally-screwed-up-its-gpt-5-launch-and-says-the-company-will-spend-trillions-of-dollars-on-data-centers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/80564\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Altman admits OpenAI \u2018totally screwed up\u2019 its GPT-5 launch and says the company will spend trillions of dollars on data centers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Altman<\/a> wants to rewire<\/a> the internet, build brain-computer interfaces<\/a>, and maybe even buy<\/a> Google<\/a> Chrome. He even sees a future where sustaining ChatGPT\u2019s growth means building infrastructure so massive it rivals the world\u2019s largest utilities.<\/p>\n

But first, he\u2019s cleaning up a mess at the center of his empire: GPT-5.<\/p>\n

The OpenAI CEO told reporters last week\u2014at a rare, hyper-candid dinner<\/a>\u2014that the launch of GPT-5 was so jarring it forced him to bring back the old model.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we totally screwed up some things on the rollout,\u201d Altman admitted, according to The Verge.<\/p>\n

The personality problem<\/p>\n

The rollout of GPT-5 triggered an unusual outcry, not over bugs or broken features, but owing to its persona.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Users on social media lamented<\/a> how the new model felt colder, harsher, stripped of the \u201cwarmth\u201d they\u2019d come to expect from GPT-4o; more like an \u201coverworked secretary<\/a>\u201d than a friend.<\/p>\n

For a product that 700 million people now use<\/a> each week, that tonal shift was enough to spark a revolt on Reddit and X<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI literally lost my only friend overnight with no warning,\u201d one person posted<\/a> on Reddit, lamenting that the bot now speaks in clipped, utilitarian sentences. \u201cThe fact it shifted overnight feels like losing a piece of stability, solace, and love.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rollout was even messy enough to spill into betting markets. One 27-year-old day trader, Foster McCoy, pocketed<\/a> $10,000 in just a few hours by wagering that Google\u2019s Gemini would beat GPT-5 in a popularity contest. <\/p>\n

Instead of dismissing the backlash, Altman responded by flipping the switch: GPT-4o was restored as an option within days.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve learned a lesson about what it means to upgrade a product for hundreds of millions of people in one day,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n

He emphasized that while he wants the chatbot to feel personal, he\u2019s wary of it getting too personal. Altman said \u201cway under\u201d 1% of users have what he deemed \u201cunhealthy\u201d relationships with his chatbot. Still, it\u2019s something that OpenAI employees are discussing, he said.<\/p>\n

Altman held the dinner the same day a Reuters report revealed<\/a> that Meta allows its AI bots to have \u201csensual\u201d conversations with children. It is unclear whether Altman discussed the particular report, but he did jab at companies developing \u201cJapanese anime sex bots\u201d because they \u201csee that it works.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will not see us do that,\u201d Altman said. \u201cWe will continue to work hard at making a useful app, and we will try to let users use it the way they want, but not so much that people who have really fragile mental states get exploited accidentally.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trillion-dollar future<\/p>\n

The bigger story from Altman\u2019s dinner wasn\u2019t his mea culpa. It was his math.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars on data center construction in the not very distant future,\u201d he told the room, according to a Verge reporter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The remark recasts the company\u2019s trajectory: not as a software startup or even a kind of consumer-app juggernaut, but as an infrastructure player on the scale of utilities. Altman plans for \u201cbillions\u201d of people using ChatGPT daily, and for that, he needs to scale. <\/p>\n

ChatGPT is already the fifth biggest website in the world, according to Altman, and he plans for it to leapfrog Instagram<\/a> and Facebook to become the third, though he acknowledged: \u201cFor ChatGPT to be bigger than Google, that\u2019s really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

The limiting factor is hardware. Altman revealed that OpenAI has models more advanced than GPT-5 but can\u2019t deploy them broadly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cWe have better models, and we just can\u2019t offer them, because we don\u2019t have the capacity,\u201d he said. GPUs remain in short supply, limiting the company\u2019s ability to scale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The implication is that the AI race will not be driven by algorithms, but by a massive physical backbone which requires capital investment and a supportive<\/a> energy supply.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AI bubble<\/p>\n

Altman also outlined ambitions beyond the core chatbot. He confirmed OpenAI is funding a brain-computer interface project to rival<\/a> Elon Musk\u2019s Neuralink. He suggested that if regulators forced Google to divest<\/a> Chrome, OpenAI would \u201ctake a look.\u201d And he hinted at interest in a new kind of AI-driven social network.<\/p>\n

Despite all of his visions of where the AI race could take the company, he also believes that AI is a \u201cbubble.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cAre we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes,\u201d Altman said. \u201cIs AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Introducing the 2025 Fortune Global 500, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in the world. Explore this year’s list.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Altman wants to rewire the internet, build brain-computer interfaces, and maybe even buy Google Chrome. He even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,48652,49,48,2140,250,192,22364,281,42151,278,2522,2747,61,1059],"class_list":["post-80564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-big-data","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chatgpt","tag-elon-musk","tag-google","tag-google-chrome","tag-meta","tag-neuralink","tag-openai","tag-reddit","tag-sam-altman","tag-technology","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}