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By Ezra Klein
Opinion Columnist
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 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 A.I. capabilities forward rather than obliterates previous limits. I’m not here to argue otherwise. OpenAI has been releasing new models at such a relentless pace — the powerful o3 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.
