Bill Gates: GPT-5 will not be much better than GPT-4, generative AI has reached its limit

Hengyu Mengchen comes from Aofei Temple
Qubit | Official account QbitAI

Bill Gates’ revelation has become a hot topic in the machine learning community:

"GPT-5 won't be much better than GPT-4."

Although he is no longer officially involved in Microsoft's day-to-day operations, he still serves as an advisor and is familiar with the thinking of the OpenAI leadership team.

The news comes from an interview with Gates in Germany's Handelsblatt .

Gates said that many people within OpenAI, including Altman, believe that GPT-5 will be significantly better than GPT-4.

But he believes that there are many reasons to believe that the current limit of generative artificial intelligence has been reached.

(Although he also admitted that he might be wrong)

It’s unknown how much undisclosed information Gates has seen within OpenAI, but it’s at least certain that GPT-5 is already under development.

Before last week's turmoil, Altman also admitted as much in an interview with the Financial Times, but he did not reveal any release timetable.

In addition, the GPT-5 trademark has also been applied for by OpenAI's operating subsidiaries in various countries early.

Gates is more optimistic about Agent

Regarding GPT-5, Altman has revealed that it requires more data for training, which will come from a combination of publicly available data sets on the Internet as well as the company’s proprietary data.

OpenAI recently called on other organizations to provide large-scale data sets that are "not currently readily accessible to the public online," particularly long-form writing or conversation in any format.

While GPT-5 may be more complex than its predecessor, Altman said it's technically difficult to predict exactly what new features the model might have that GPT-4 doesn't . "Before we trained the model, it was like a fun guessing game for us."

In Gates' view, the hallucination problem of AI will be greatly improved within a few years, and costs will drop rapidly, making new, reliable applications possible.

But the capability has reached its upper limit, and there will not be a major leap like GPT-2 to GPT-4.

So what will be the next breakthrough? Gates believes it is explainable AI, but it is not expected to be realized until the next decade (2030-2039) .

In addition, he also said that Nvidia does not have an absolute advantage in AI chips. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and OpenAI are all developing or considering developing their own AI chips.

Okay, here comes the question -

If Gates is not so confident in the path of GPT-5, which current AI development path is he optimistic about?

The answer is: AI Agent .

It's not that much of a secret. At the beginning of this month, Gates wrote a blog, focusing on how "personal AI agents will completely change the way people use computers."

In that blog post, he clearly wrote that AI Agent will bring shock waves to the technology industry and society.

Specifically, Gates said this:

In the near future, any Internet user will be able to own an AI Agent, which is far beyond what is possible with today's technology.
Agents can play a role anywhere in life and have a profound impact on the software business and even society.

And this is not the first time Gates has publicly supported AI Agents.

At an AI event in May this year, Gates predicted in an interview that the first company to develop AI Agents would definitely gain a foothold among competitors.

The reason is that AI Agent will deal a fatal blow to search engines. With something as versatile as Agent, what else will be needed are search websites, productivity websites, and Amazon. These will all be forgotten by netizens by then.

Moreover, Gates's optimism about Agent is not just lip service.

In June, Gates invested in the AI ​​unicorn InflectionAI together with Nvidia, Microsoft, Reid Hoffman (Linkedin) and Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Google) .

In addition to "I invest in myself" Hoffman, the three co-founders of InflectionAI also have two big guys from DeepMind.

However, this investment is obviously not just a bet on the founder, the focus is on what exactly InflectionAI is doing——

A personal AI assistant called Pi.

Pi can also help search or answer questions, but its main function is emotional companionship . Compared with ChatGPT and Claude, it is more colloquial and personal. "When users communicate with Pi, they feel like they are chatting with relatives and friends around them."

To be honest, although Pi is known for its high emotional intelligence, the technology and actual experience behind it are still far from the AI ​​Agent that Gates imagined.

But Gates said that he was thinking about intelligent agents 30 years ago and wrote about it in his 1995 book "The Road to the Future."

However, due to the development of AI technology, it was not until recently that we saw the light of newbie villages like Pi.

"Agents will not only change the way everyone interacts with computers." Gates also wrote in the blog post, " Agents will subvert the software industry. This will be the biggest computing revolution from entering commands to clicking icons ."

In Gates' imagination, Agent can help you accomplish anything as long as you are willing.

In Gates' eyes, AI will not take away your job, but it can make it possible for people to work only 3 days a week in the future.

In addition, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimonye also predicted that due to artificial intelligence, the next generation of workers will only work 3.5 days per week.

One More Thing

But don’t get carried away by Gates’ talk of a three-day work week.

Although Gates often expresses his views on the future, he is not known for his accurate predictions.

Every time this time comes, some netizens will find out what he said back then: "640K memory is enough for anyone" and "I think the commercial potential of the Internet in the next 10 years will be minimal."

Reference links:
[1] https://www.handelsblatt.com/technik/ki/bill-gates-mit-ki-koennen-medikamente-viel-schneller-entwickelt-werden/29450298.html
[2] https:// www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/183tft1/bill_gates_told_a_german_newspaper_that_gpt5/
[3] https://www.gatesnotes.com/AI-agents

Click here ???? Follow me and remember to mark it with a star