AI Quotes of Note: OpenAI's Sam Altman and Nick Turley, prior to - and after

Sam Altman, prior to the launch of OpenAI's GPT-5:

“GPT-5 is the first time that it really feels like talking to an expert in any topic, like a PhD-level expert.”

“A significant step along the path to AGI.”

Altman, after the launch:

“The numbers here were accurate but we screwed up the bar charts in the livestream overnight; on another slide we screwed up numbers."

"People were working late and were very tired, and human error got in the way.”

"As we mentioned, we expected some bumpiness as we roll out so many things at once. but it was a little more bumpy than we hoped for!"

Altman on what OpenAI is doing now:

Stabilizing and listening: “We will continue to work to get things stable and will keep listening to feedback.”
Immediate user relief: “We are going to double rate limits for Plus users as we finish rollout.”
Tone/personality tweak: An update should feel “not as annoying (to most users) as GPT-4o.”

Nick Turley, OpenAI’s head of ChatGPT, said:

“In retrospect, not continuing to offer 4o, at least in the interim, was a miss.” In an interview with The Verge on Tuesday, Turley said it was surprising to see the “level of attachment” people had to 4o.

“It’s not just change that is difficult for folks, it’s also the fact that people can have such a strong feeling about the personality of a model.”

Turley said that OpenAI was working to bring the “warmth” of 4o to GPT-5.

Looking ahead, according to Turley, ChatGPT won’t completely get rid of its existing models when a new one is introduced, and the company is not planning to remove 4o again without advance notice.

“My commitment is that, if we ever did retire 4o, we’d want to give people a heads up on when and how that’s gonna happen, just like we do in the API and on our enterprise plans."

Turley concluded with, "We’re at a scale now where we have to give people some level of predictability when there’s a major change.”