Marcus doubted that a mindblowing GPT model would be released in 2024.

The claim is that no 'mindblowing' GPT model would be released during calendar 2024. A GPT model means one from OpenAI's GPT or successor line (for example GPT-4o or o1). 'Mindblowing' means broadly treated by mainstream tech press and AI experts as a step-change comparable to the jump from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4 or larger, not just an incremental improvement. True: no model released in 2024 was broadly characterised that way, and 2024 releases were widely described as incremental. Mostly true: a 2024 release drew some 'breakthrough' framing, but the prevailing assessment was incremental or narrow. Mixed: credible opinion is substantially split on whether a 2024 release was such a leap. Mostly false: a 2024 release was widely, though not universally, regarded as a major leap. False: a GPT model released in 2024 was broadly hailed as a GPT-4-scale leap. A model announced but not released by 2024-12-31 does not count.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Hello GPT-4o OpenAI · 13 May 2024

   “As measured on traditional benchmarks, GPT‑4o achieves GPT‑4 Turbo-level performance on text, reasoning, and coding intelligence, while setting new high watermarks on multilingual, audio, and vision capabilities.”

2. E2 12 days of OpenAI: The Ars Technica recap Ars Technica · 12 December 2024

   “The company reported that the model operates faster than its preview version and reduces major errors by 34 percent on complex real-world questions.”

3. E3 OpenAI's o3 model aced a test of AI reasoning – but it's still not AGI | New Scientist New Scientist · 20 December 2024

   “The o3 model’s high score comes as the tech industry and AI researchers have been reckoning with a slower pace of progress in the latest AI models for 2024, compared with the initial explosive developments of 2023.”

4. E4 OpenAI o3 Breakthrough High Score on ARC-AGI-Pub | ARC Prize ARC Prize · 20 December 2024

   “This is a surprising and important step-function increase in AI capabilities, showing novel task adaptation ability never seen before in the GPT-family models.”

OpenAI's own launch post for GPT-4o says its text, reasoning and coding performance is at the GPT-4 Turbo level, with gains in multilingual, audio and vision (E1). That describes an incremental step, not a GPT-4-scale leap. Ars Technica reports the company said the fully released model is faster than its preview version and reduces major errors by 34 percent on complex real-world questions (E2). New Scientist says the industry and AI researchers were "reckoning with a slower pace of progress" in 2024's latest models (E3). The ARC Prize calls an o3 result a "step-function increase in AI capabilities" (E4). New Scientist's report on the same result says o3 is still not AGI and notes a slower pace of progress in 2024's AI models (E3). This is breakthrough framing from one source alongside a more measured assessment. The evidence I have on how the press broadly received 2024 releases is thin, so I rate this mostly true rather than fully true.