Living with ChatGPT already feels normal

That surprising finding is what makes artificial intelligence a revolutionary technology.

- Ezra Klein

I seem to be having a very different experience with GPT-5, the newest iteration of OpenAI's flagship model, from most everyone else.

The commentariat consensus is that GPT-5 is a dud, a disappointment, perhaps even evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) progress is running aground. Meanwhile, I'm over here filled with wonder and nerves. Perhaps this is what the future always feels like once we reach it: too normal to notice how strange our world has become.

The knock on GPT-5 is that it nudges the frontier of AI capabilities forward rather than obliterates previous limits. OpenAI has been releasing new models at such a relentless pace—the powerful 03 model came out four months ago—that it has cannibalized the shock we might have felt if there had been nothing between the 2023 release of GPT-4 and the 2025 release of GPT-5.

But GPT-5, at least for me, has been a leap in what it feels like to use an AI model. It reminds me of setting up thumbprint recognition on an iPhone: You keep lifting your thumb on and off the sensor, watching a bit more of the image fill in each time, until finally, with one last touch, you have a full thumbprint. GPT-5 feels like a thumbprint.

A LEAP

I had early access to GPT-3, lo those many moons ago, and barely ever used it. GPT-3.5, which powered the 2022 release of ChatGPT, didn't do much for me either. It was the dim outline of useful AI rather than the thing itself.

GPT-4 was released in 2023, and as the model was improved in a series of confusingly named updates, I found myself using it more—and opening the Google search window much less. But something about it still felt false and gimmicky.