OpenAI's latest wonder-child, GPT-5 (nicknamed "Orion," because apparently "Bob" wasn't fancy enough), is having what we might call a rather expensive midlife crisis.
And when I say expensive, I mean "half-a-billion-dollars-for-six-months-of-training" expensive.
That's right – this AI costs more to maintain than my neighbor's collection of vintage sports cars he never drives.
_0.jpg "GPT-5: The AI That Ate the Internet (And Is Still Hungry)") |
| GPT-5: The AI That Ate the Internet (And Is Still Hungry) |
You see, OpenAI has stumbled upon a fascinating discovery: there might not be enough data in the world to make their new AI as smart as they want it to be.
Imagine that! We've finally found something the internet doesn't have enough of, and it's not cat videos.
Who would've thought?
The situation reminds me of trying to feed a teenage boy during a growth spurt. You open the fridge, and no matter how much food you put in there, it's never enough. GPT-5 is sitting there like a digital teenager saying, "But Mooom, I've already eaten all the internet! What's for dessert?"
The project is currently running about as smoothly as a chocolate teapot. It's over budget, behind schedule, and doing its best impression of a student who keeps saying "I'm almost done with my homework" while binge-watching Netflix.
Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest investor (and helicopter parent), had expected to see GPT-5 by midyear. I suppose they forgot the first rule of AI development: everything takes twice as long as you expect, even when you take into account that everything takes twice as long as you expect.
Here's where it gets really interesting: OpenAI's solution to the data shortage is to hire software engineers, mathematicians, and theoretical physicists to create original training material.
That's right – they're basically hiring people to write bedtime stories for their AI. These poor souls are probably sitting in rooms right now, writing complex mathematical equations and whispering, "Once upon a time, there was a lonely polynomial..."
And the cost? Oh, the cost! Six months of training runs about half a billion dollars. For that kind of money, you could buy a small island, or perhaps fund a space mission to find more data on other planets.
The company valued at $157 billion is learning the hard way that you can't just throw money at an AI and expect it to become superintelligent – though that doesn't stop them from trying.
The whole situation reminds me of those people who buy increasingly larger hard drives because they "need more storage," only to fill them up with copies of copies of photos they'll never look at. OpenAI is basically doing the same thing, but with computer cycles and at a scale that makes your monthly electricity bill look like pocket change.
Let's talk about those training sessions, shall we?
OpenAI has held at least two large training sessions, each taking months of number-crunching that would make a calculator cry. With each test run, new problems popped up like mushrooms after rain. It's like they're playing whack-a-mole with bugs, except each swing costs more than a luxury yacht.
The best part? In the best-case scenario, Orion performs better than their current offerings but not enough to justify its astronomical cost. It's like buying a sports car that's technically faster than your current car but only by the time it takes to say "Was this really worth it?"
OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman predicted that GPT-5 would mark a "significant leap forward." At this rate, it's looking more like an expensive hop sideways while wearing golden shoes. The tech industry projected that big tech companies could spend $1 trillion on AI projects in the years to come.
At this pace, they might want to add another trillion, just to be safe.
The cherry on top? OpenAI's co-founder Ilya Sutskever compared the lack of data to the depletion of fossil fuels. Finally, an energy crisis we can't solve by switching to solar panels! Although, has anyone tried pointing the AI at a few seasons of reality TV? That might either solve the data shortage or cause it to give up on humanity entirely.
As we wait to see how this expensive digital drama unfolds, one thing's become clear: building superintelligent AI is a bit like trying to teach a cat to fetch – technically possible, incredibly expensive, and the cat might just decide to take a nap instead.
At least the cat doesn't cost half a billion dollars to feed.
For now, GPT-5 remains behind schedule, over budget, and hungry for more data than the internet can provide.
It's like watching a gourmet chef realize they've run out of ingredients halfway through preparing a feast – except this feast costs more than feeding a small country for a year. Perhaps it's time to put GPT-5 on a data diet?
In the meantime, Microsoft watches from the sidelines like a parent who just funded their kid's "definitely going to be successful" startup, wondering if they should have just bought another yacht instead.
But hey, at least they're pushing the boundaries of what's possible – even if those boundaries are pushing back harder than expected.
_1.jpg "GPT-5: When Your Artificial Intelligence Has Expensive Taste") |
| GPT-5: When Your Artificial Intelligence Has Expensive Taste |
OpenAI's problems developing GPT-5, how the tech giant's ambitious AI project has encountered unexpected obstacles. This post explores the irony of the internet running out of data, costs skyrocketing to half a billion dollars, and the challenges of feeding an AI whose appetites are greater than its capabilities.
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