OpenAI's senior leaders recently participated in a Reddit AMA session, revealing their future plans and other insights. The session featured Sam Altman (CEO), Kevin Weil (Chief Product Officer), Mark Chen (SVP of Research), Srinivas Narayanan (VP of Engineering), and Jakub Pachocki (Chief Scientist).
Model Development & Releases:
Q: Is there a plan to continue to release models in the "o" series from now on? Will you continue to improve on the "regular" models (e.g., GPT-3, 4, 4o, 5)? Both, or a combination of those?
A: Both! And at some point, I expect they'll converge.
Q: When will ChatGPT-5 or its equivalent be released?
A: We have some very good releases coming later this year! Nothing that we are going to call GPT-5, though.
Q: Any timeline on when we'll get AVM with vision capabilities? Why is GPT-5 taking so long? What about the full release of o1?
A: We are prioritizing shipping o1 and its successors. All of these models have gotten quite complex, and we can't ship as many things in parallel as we'd like to. (We also face a lot of limitations and hard decisions about how we allocate our compute resources toward many great ideas.) We don't have a date for AVM with vision yet.
Q: When will o1 be released, and will it offer any improvement over the preview?
A: Soon, and yes.
Model Features & Capabilities:
Q: Will the token context window be increased for OpenAI's models? They are way too small compared to other AI models out there.
A: We agree. We're working on it!
Q: When is the next text-to-image model coming? DALL-E 3 is kind of outdated.
A: The next update will be worth the wait! But we don't have a release plan yet.
Q: Will we see Advanced Voice loosen restrictions around musical capabilities (like singing) at some point? Is there a timeline for this?
A: We're working on it! I want to hear ChatGPT sing, too.
Q: Why doesn't o1 support image input?
A: We focused on getting it out to the world first, versus waiting to make it fully featured. Image input is coming to o1, and in general, the "o" series of models will be getting things like multimodality, tool use, etc., in the coming months.
Q: Is Sora capable of handling video input?
A: Yep!
AGI & Future of AI:
Q: Seriously though, what did Ilya Sutskever see?
A: The transcendent future. Ilya is an incredible visionary and sees the future more clearly than almost anyone else. His early ideas, excitement, and vision were critical to so much of what we have done. For example, he was one of the key initial explorers and champions of some of the ideas that eventually became o1. The field is very lucky to have him.
Q: Is AGI achievable with currently known hardware, or will it take something entirely different?
A: We believe it is achievable with current hardware.
Q: What's the next breakthrough in the GPT line of products, and what's the expected timeline?
A: We will have better and better models, but I think what will feel like the next giant breakthrough will be agents.
Q: A bold prediction for 2025?
A: AI models will saturate all the benchmarks.
OpenAI's Approach & Strategy:
Q: OpenAI has shifted from a more open-source approach to a more closed model in recent years. Can you elaborate on the reasoning behind this change? How do you weigh the trade-offs between openness and the potential risks associated with widely accessible advanced AI technologies? Is it inevitable in the long run that powerful models end up in the hands of bad actors?
A: I think open source plays an important role in the ecosystem, and there are great open-source models in the world. We also think there's an important role in the world for powerful and easy-to-use APIs and services. Given what we are good at, we see an easier way to reach the safety threshold we want to reach this way. We are pretty proud of how much value people get out of our services. I would like us to open-source more things in the future.
Other Topics
Q: Will ChatGPT eventually be able to perform tasks on its own?
A: In my humble opinion, this is going to be a big theme in 2025.
Q: Is ChatGPT search still using Bing as the search engine behind the scenes?
A: We use a set of services, and Bing is an important one.
Q: Is Sora being delayed due to the amount of compute/time required for inference or due to safety concerns?
A: We need to perfect the model, ensure safety, prevent impersonation, and other issues, and we need to scale compute!
Q: What are your long-term goals (in a perfect world) regarding the ability for adult users to toggle, if desired, NSFW content (within reason)?
A: We totally believe in treating adult users like adults. But it takes a lot of work to get this right, and right now we have more urgent priorities. We would like to get this right someday!
The AMA provided a transparent look into OpenAI's roadmap and strategy. With a focus on safety, improved models, and exciting new features like multimodality and agents, we can expect OpenAI to continue pushing the boundaries of AI development.
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