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GPT-4.5, GPT-5, and AGI are coming šŸ§ 

Plus, When Capital No Longer Needs Labor, How Does Labor Gain Capital? šŸ’°

Author

Steve Brown
February 13, 2025

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The weekā€™s most interesting and relevant AI news and analysis

This Week in AI

In the first few phases of the ongoing industrial revolution, we built mechanical muscles. Now, we are building mechanical minds.

In his latest blog post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that AGI is ā€œcoming into viewā€ and that this makes him enthusiastic and worried about the future. Specifically, he imagines a world where we cure all diseases, and each realize our creative potential. He says, ā€œIn a decade, perhaps everyone on earth will be capable of accomplishing more than the most impactful person today.ā€ He made three observations:

  1. The intelligence of an AI model roughly equals the log of the resources used to train it. (e.g., scaling laws still hold, though you have to spend more and more to get linear gains)

  2. The cost to use a given level of AI falls about 10x every 12 months, and lower prices lead to much more use (e.g., Jevons Paradox in action)

  3. The socioeconomic value of linearly increasing intelligence is super-exponential.

He admits that our economy and society are about to undergo huge change and that AGIā€™s benefits may not be widely distributed. He calls for proactive policies and technological advancements that democratize access to AIā€™s power and make plans to integrate it into society.

In another post this week, Altman says OpenAI will release its GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 models within ā€˜weeksā€™ and ā€˜months.ā€™ GPT-4.5 was previously known internally by the codename ā€˜Orion.ā€™ GPT-5 will integrate many other OpenAI technologies, including the reasoning model, o3, which it plans to cancel as a separate release.

Syntheticā€™s Take: OpenAI has decided that reasoning capabilities are the future of all its models. Reasoning improves capabilities and accuracy (see the hallucination chart below), so they will integrate it across all their offerings and simplify their product line.

At the Paris AI Summit this week, co-hosted by France and India, France stepped up and announced a $112B AI investment package, characterized by some as their answer to the U.S.ā€™ Stargate program. The French government also pledged to build a nuclear power plant to power its AI ambitions. U.S. Vice President, representing the U.S. government, railed against ā€˜excessiveā€™ AI regulation in a rebuke to Europe and told summit attendees that the U.S. would dominate in AI. By contrast, the Chinese Vice Premier offered to share AI achievements, work with other countries to safeguard security, and build a ā€œcommunity with a shared future of mankind.ā€ Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei released a statement imploring democratic societies to accelerate AI development to prevent authoritarian countries from using it for global dominance. In the summitā€™s final communique, 60 countries (including France, India, China, and Canada) agreed to a series of voluntary commitments to make emerging AI technology inclusive and sustainable. The UK and U.S. refused to sign the declaration. This is a complete list of the summitā€™s announcements.

Quick Hits

Video: Google DeepMind CEO Wants To Build A Virtual Cell to Push Boundaries of Medicine

The always-impressive Demis Hassabis talks to Alex Kantrowitz about his ambition to build on his Nobel-prize-winning work with AlphaFold to build a virtual cell using AI as an underlying platform. Within five years, we may be able to use virtual cells to help us understand disease paths and develop new drugs and cures, understand aging, and improve human health. DeepMind is also exploring how AI can help us understand genetic mutations and predict their impact on the body. AI may help us to understand the aging process, interrupt it, and develop rejuvenation therapies. Watch this video if you want a dose of the future delivered by a pragmatic optimist with his finger on the pulse of the future of AI and medicine. (8m 40s) šŸ§¬šŸ”¬šŸ§«

AI Tech and Innovation

Get ready to live in a world of AI agents

AI darling Snowflake has launched new Cortex AI agents as part of a service to simplify data integration, retrieval, and processing. These agents use Anthropicā€™s Claude and are available for public preview now. They are built on top of Snowflakeā€™s Cortex Analyst and Cortex Search services and can plan tasks, explore options, and execute them using tools. The agents use reflection after they use each tool to evaluate results and determine next steps. šŸ¤–

Syntheticā€™s Take: 2025 will be the year of agents, and you should expect to see many announcements like this over the coming weeks and months. Everybody is about to get their agent on!!

Frontier AI lab Anthropic has released an Economic Index that analyzes millions of conversations with its Claude AI to draw conclusions about how people use it in the workplace. Its initial report includes the following insights:

  • AI is most commonly used in medium to high-wage roles.

  • The majority of current AI usage (57%) is focused on augmentation and collaboration. The remaining 43% is focused on task or workflow automation.

  • About one-third of users use AI in at least 25% of their tasks, but only 4% use it across 75% of their tasks.

Specifically, itā€™s considering how its models should handle controversial topics, user customization, and ā€˜intellectual freedom,ā€™ which is OpenAIā€™s term for usersā€™ ability to explore and debate ideas without arbitrary restrictions. OpenAI has expanded and updated its model spec, which defines how its models should behave, and it is making it free for anyone to use or modify.

AI Insights

How will we live good lives when machines do all the work? The article below explores the issue and suggests some solutions.

Emad Mostaque is the former CEO of Stability AI and a controversial character in the AI world. His thoughtful post explores the likely impact of artificial general intelligence on work, the economy, and society. It emphasizes the need for policies that democratize access to AI technologies, ensure equitable distribution of benefits, and address job displacement challenges. He expresses the need to develop new economic models prioritizing human well-being and environmental sustainability in a post-labor economy, including universal basic income and/or public ownership of AI infrastructure. Mustaque proposes five strategies for economic adaptation:

  1. Control of Key Resources: Data pipelines, proprietary algorithms, and computational infrastructure constitute critical bottlenecks in the AI economy. Policymakers and entrepreneurs must prioritize democratizing access to these essential resources.

  2. Data Ownership: Individuals should assert ownership over their personal data and earn royalties or dividends when such data is monetized.

  3. Universal Basic Capital: Governments could distribute equity in AI-driven enterprises to ensure that automationā€™s dividends benefit society collectively rather than exclusively enriching a privileged few.

  4. Universal Basic AI: Inspired by the Intelligent Internet framework, this approach advocates for equitable access to AI tools for education, healthcare, and professional development. Subsidizing AI systems could mitigate socioeconomic divides.

  5. Entrepreneurial Opportunities: By drastically reducing operational costs, AI empowers individuals to launch ventures with capabilities previously reserved for large organizations.

The big labs are all releasing their first batch of agents, AIs that can handle more complex tasks and execute those tasks using your computer's browser. These models are experimental but point to whatā€™s next in computing. These early models can handle simple tasks such as online shopping and booking flights, but they come with significant limitations and some safety concerns.

Former New York Times columnist and Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman writes that the AI boom is much like the dot-com bubble but may not end in a massive crash. He says that the end game may differ since AI is dominated by major players already well-placed to exploit network effects and operate as quasi-monopolies. He suspects the main risk is that the magnificent seven over-invest and fail to generate adequate returns.

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