There is a lot of speculation about GPT-4, but hardly any official statements. Now OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has spoken out.
According to rumors so gar, GPT-4 will be released relatively soon, possibly in the first quarter of 2023, and will offer significantly more performance than GPT-3.5.
Rumors about insane model sizes ("100 trillion parameters") have been circulating in social media for weeks, but none of them are well-founded - or justified. If anything, the last few months of AI development with models such as Chinchilla, Sparse Luminous Base or OpenAI's ChatGPT show that the number of parameters is by no means everything, but that architecture, data quantity and quality also play a major role in training.
OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman said in September 2021 that GPT-4 might not become much bigger than GPT-3. Instead, progress should come from higher-quality data, better algorithms and more precise fine-tuning - exactly what GPT-3.5 and ChatGPT are showing now. GPT-4 will also be able to handle more context.
GPT-4 will come when it can be done "safely and responsibly"
At a venture capital event, Altman spoke again about the upcoming GPT-4, saying that the new model should not appear until it can be done "safely and responsibly." That's not news so far; OpenAI has been saying that since GPT-2.
Altman added, however, that OpenAI is going to "release technology much more slowly than people would like."
"We're going to sit on it for much longer…," Altman said. That doesn't sound like a fast GPT-4 launch, at least not in full.
Altman also announced that OpenAI is working on a generative AI system for video. Google has already unveiled three text-to-video systems with Imagen Video, Phenaki, and a combination of the two. Meta also showed a text-to-video system with Make-a-Video.
Microsoft's investment could change OpenAI's strategy
As early as December 2022, Altman acknowledged that given "unpredictable research," it was very difficult to predict exactly when a new model with what capabilities would come to market.
"But generally speaking, it's safe to assume models will get much better," Altman said. Microsoft's upcoming major investment in OpenAI could also change OpenAI's release plans.
It's possible that Microsoft will prioritize integrating OpenAI technology into its products or even secure exclusive rights, as it did with GPT-3. Allegedly, ChatGPT is to be integrated into Office products.
