Sam Altman Explains Why GPT-5 Isn’t Yet True AGI

OpenAI has just launched GPT-5, calling it the company’s most capable model so far. But CEO Sam Altman made it clear that it still doesn’t meet the criteria for artificial general intelligence, or AGI—the ultimate goal OpenAI has been working toward since its founding.

While GPT-5 marks a major leap forward in capability, Altman told reporters during a press call that it doesn’t yet reach the AGI milestone, which is typically understood as an AI that can think, reason, and adapt like a human.

"This is clearly a model that is generally intelligent, although I think in the way that most of us define AGI, we're still missing something quite important, or many things quite important," he said.

One of those key missing capabilities, according to Altman, is the ability to learn continuously in real time.

"One big one is, you know, this is not a model that continuously learns as it's deployed from the new things it finds, which is something that to me feels like AGI. But the level of intelligence here, the level of capability, it feels like a huge improvement," he said.

OpenAI has long said that AGI is its central missionm a system that could match or exceed human-level thinking across a wide range of tasks. But what AGI actually means, and when we might achieve it, remains a hotly debated question in the AI community. Experts like Meta’s Yann LeCun have suggested that the world could still be many years—if not decades—away from reaching that level.

Still, Altman sees GPT-5 as a step forward. Reflecting on OpenAI’s progress, he said:

"If I could go back five years before GPT-3, and you told me we have this now, I'd be like, that's a significant fraction of the way to something very AGI-like."

In a previous blog post, Altman recalled why he and his cofounders started the company: a belief in the possibility of AGI and its potential to be the most transformative technology in human history.

"We started OpenAI almost nine years ago because we believed that AGI was possible, and that it could be the most impactful technology in human history," he wrote.

And while AGI remains the primary objective, Altman is already looking ahead to what comes after.

"Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity," he wrote earlier this year.