Does GPT-5 Live Up To the Hype?, AGI Wait Continues, Self-Loathing Gemini

Big Technology Podcast

Alex Kantrowitz

Technology, Religion & Spirituality, Business News, Business, Religion, Science, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Entrepreneurship, Management, Marketing, Politics, News Commentary, Government, Investing, Tech News, Social Sciences, News

4.6 • 395 Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAI's launch of GPT-5 2) Whether GPT-5's tool calling ability is its hidden strength 3) GPT-5 is good at 'doing stuff' 4) But GPT-5 is not AGI 5) Do AI models need more than book smarts to thrive? 6) OpenAI's medicine play 7) GPT-5's coding use case 8) We need AI tables for travel 9) Do the big model players now subsume AI startups? 10) Gemini has a breakdown --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack + Discord? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	GPD 5 is here.
0:01.5	Finally, does it live up to the hype?
0:03.7	That's coming up on a special Big Technology Podcast Friday edition right after this.
0:09.0	Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format.
0:15.6	You know what we're going to be talking about today because GPT5 has finally been released by OpenAI. Of course, we had OpenAI C.O.
0:24.5	Brad Lightcap on the show just a few hours ago, so that episode will be the most recent one in your
0:30.1	podcast feed where you're going to get the official line from OpenAI and a bunch of really
0:34.8	interesting insights about what it took to train this model and where the AI field is going.
0:39.9	But today, as we always do on Friday, Ranjan Roy and I will break down exactly what the situation is with this new model
0:48.1	and whether this is actually something that lives up to the hype that people have been talking about.
0:53.5	No overreactions. We're going to do it with the proper context. And with that, I want to welcome Ron John back to the show. Rajan, welcome. Happy AGI day, Alex. Is it here? No, it's not here. Is it here? I lost the bet. I lost the bet. Look, Sam Altman said that GPT5 is smarter than almost everything, every single thing a human does.
1:11.8	So I thought, okay, fine, you know, we're finally going to see AGI, but it turns out no, no AGI.
1:16.8	And we will talk about that in the middle.
1:18.6	But first, we have a little interesting announcement.
1:21.5	So let's hear it.
1:22.6	Yeah.
1:22.9	In additioning to writing the margins newsletter, I've actually been working at a company called writer, writer.com.
1:30.3	It's an enterprise, a generative AI startup,
1:33.3	and I'm leading the vertical for the retail industry.
1:36.3	I wanted to bring that up today because GPT5 and what it means for me,
1:41.3	I think is heavily informed by a lot of the work I've been doing. And I think it might be a little AGI-ish. I mean, it's amazing that you go to an AI company and the first thing, your first sentence out of your mouth is, yep, we have AGI here. But no, no, it's okay. I think I anticipate you'll come in with a level head. So let's talk about GPT5.
2:01.2	Okay, so this is from TechCrunch.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 8 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Alex Kantrowitz, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Alex Kantrowitz and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.