GPT-5 Arrives, and We Try the New Alexa+

Hard Fork

The New York Times

Technology

4.5 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Sam Altman in his remarks said that this is a major upgrade,” but he also said that “we’re not at A.G.I. yet.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	I had a first this week.
0:02.3	What's that?
0:02.8	I had my first experience with smelling salts.
0:06.5	Wait, did you faint?
0:07.9	Yes.
0:09.1	So I had to get a blood draw at the doctor, and I am a big baby when it comes to getting
0:16.5	blood taken.
0:17.8	And so, like, half the time when I get blood taken, I pass out. And this time,
0:23.4	I not only passed out, but I vomited. And had to be brought back with smelling salts, which,
0:28.9	Casey, if you have never experienced smelling salts, they're not messing around. They are not.
0:36.4	And I, okay, so I cannot believe that i'm just learning
0:39.5	this information about you because i am also a fainter you're a fainter i am a fainter we are legion
0:44.7	in 12th grade we went to go see a cadaver for my api biology class and intellectually i was
0:51.9	like so fascinated you know by all the systems of the body and so me and all the other kids are standing around the cadaver and the person is sort of explaining, well, you know, this is the liver and this is the spleen. And then I just got a whiff of something. I don't know if it was embalming fluid or formaldehyde or something, but it was like something triggered in my brain and was like, this is against nature. Like, you should not be this close to an opened up dead body. And I, and I truly, I spun around. I took a header off a whiteboard that was like, you know, against the wall. And I wake up and I'm staring at the ceiling. And the first thing I hear is my AP bioteacher, Miss Oliver, saying, do we have an emergency contact for this kid? Obviously, like, I don't want to tell people that they should, like, faint, but it is one of the most amazing, crazy experiences you can have in the human. Like, do you know what I mean? The moment when you're like, your consciousness just sort of, like, leaves you? Yes. Crazy. And when I was brought back with the smelling salts, it felt very like Victorian, you know?
1:45.6	I was like, on my facing couch.
1:48.0	The vapors!
1:48.7	The vapors!
1:50.4	Call Mr. Darcy.
1:57.1	I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at the New York Times.
1:59.6	I'm Casey Noon from Platformer.
2:01.2	And this is Hard Fork.
2:02.4	This week, give me five.
	...

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