OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap: GPT-5's Capabilities, Why It Matters, and Where AI Goes Next

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

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brad Lightcap is the Chief Operating Officer of OpenAI. Lightcap joins Big Technology to discuss the launch of GPT-5, how it works, what sets it apart from previous models, and whether it's AGI. We also cover scaling laws, post-training breakthroughs, enterprise adoption, health care applications, pricing strategy, and the company’s profitability outlook. Hit play for a front-row seat to OpenAI’s thinking on the future of AI. --- 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

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0:00.0	GPT5 is here and OpenAI CEO Brad Lightcap is with us to break down the new models capabilities,
0:06.2	what it means for the AI business, and what's next for this promising technology.
0:11.1	Brad, it's so great to see you.
0:12.3	Thank you for joining us on an emergency episode of Big Technology Podcast.
0:16.3	My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
0:17.7	All right. So briefly, I just want you to talk a little bit about what GPT5 is. So maybe within like 60 seconds or so, can you talk about what it is and how it
0:25.8	improves on previous opening eye models? Yeah, so GPT5 is, it's our next generation flagship model.
0:34.1	It does something really interesting, which is it actually combines into one model the ability to dynamically choose whether to think hard about a problem and reason about it to give you an answer or not.
0:45.3	And so you'll remember previously you had to go deal with the model picker and chat GPT, everyone's favorite thing.
0:51.3	You had to select a model that you wanted to use for a given task,
0:56.0	and then you'd run the process of asking a question, getting an answer. Sometimes you choose a thinking model.
1:02.0	Sometimes you wouldn't. And that was, I think, a confusing experience for users.
1:07.0	GPT5 abstracts all of that. So it makes that decision for you. And it's actually a smarter model.
1:12.6	So you're going to get a better answer in all cases,
1:15.6	regardless of whether you're using the thinking mode or not.
1:19.6	And it's vastly improved on things like writing, coding, health.
1:24.6	It's much more accurate, it's much faster. And so all around, we think a better experience.
1:29.3	And now, for those of us who've been following the hype,
1:33.3	I think we probably imagine you would lead with
1:35.3	this is an explosive increase in intelligence
1:38.3	versus there's a switcher on the model
1:41.3	that will go to reasoning or non-reasoning
	...

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