Marginal Gains 🤖🆕

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the stumbling launch of GPT-5. There’s a lot to like about OpenAI’s new family of LLM models, including coding and advanced reasoning abilities, but the rollout has been uncharacteristically chaotic from the usually slick OpenAI team. Time to lower expectations? We also have news on a rival to Tea App facing a similar embarrassing data breach, Elon Musk suing Apple, the end of the dial-up internet era, a new music generator from ElevenLabs, and all the latest from 3Advance.

🔥 Vibe & Validate with 3A: Workshop, Prototype and Roadmap in ONE Week 🔥

🎬 Our Top Take

🤖 😩 GPT-5 –Underwhelming Launch Leaves OpenAI Red-Faced

Back in January, Sam Altman mentioned AGI (artificial general intelligence) several times in his “Reflections” blog, as he looked ahead to 2025 and OpenAI’s direction of travel. This week, he has played down AGI, suggesting it might not be a useful term at all. Altman is all about small, incremental gains now, indicating that we should marvel at AI’s steady progress in certain areas rather than expect some sci-fi-level super-brain to suddenly appear. Sam’s pivot this week is no coincidence, as OpenAI has finally rolled out its new model GPT-5. It is better, but only in small ways (incremental gains, remember), and it certainly lacks the wow-factor that seems essential in this AI race. The roll-out was also a mess. For some reason, OpenAI removed access to older models (GPT-4o, 3o mini, etc.) on ChatGPT without warning and is now facing a user revolt because, as it turns out, many users had built up prompting styles and workflow histories with those models. Reddit and X saw plenty of critical user posts, with a significant number saying they were going to reach for the cancel subscription button. We will have to wait for the furor to die down to really get the pulse around GPT-5, but, for now, the messy rollout should not detract from those incremental gains, especially in coding and advanced reasoning. Like the arrival of each new iPhone model in the post-Jobs era, we should perhaps temper expectations and be happy with minor improvements. #GPT-5 Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Eleven Music

ElevenLabs has been one of the global leaders in AI Voice intelligence ever since its founding in 2022. Now, though, it is making waves in music. Its music generator – branded as Eleven Music – promises studio-quality music production with natural language prompting. Crucially, the music and songs you produce are cleared for commercial use, so you can use them for your business without any fear of litigation. ElevenLabs has numerous subscription packages, with many based on a credits system, but as far as we can see, you will be able to access Eleven Music generator through its Starter package at five bucks a month. Check it out here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 4-15GW

📈📉 AI Training – Demand Will Require 10X Data Center Capacity by 2030

One of (several) criticisms of GPT-5 is that OpenAI has been coy on how much energy it is using: the reluctance to say suggests it’s bigger than expected. Nonetheless, it is clear that AI data and energy demands are being deemed critical to the growth of the sector, and those demands may not be met. One study by Epoch has suggested that the power required to train frontier (leading) models is growing by 2X per year, and that we are going to need 10 times the Data Center capacity by 2030 to generate the 4-15 Gigawatts needed by the start of the next decade. #DataNeeds Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

You may have noticed the Vibe & Validate with 3A link above, so we thought we’d share more about what we’re up to. We’ve been building apps and AI products for well over a decade, and one thing we’ve learned: there’s no one-size-fits-all path to launching your idea. Sometimes you need speed. Sometimes precision. And sometimes you just need a smart, low-risk way to find out if your idea has legs. We also want to make it really easy for entrepreneurs to know what it’s going to take and what it’s going to cost. So here’s our three options:

😎 Vibe – In just one week, we’ll workshop your business plan and then vibe or low-code a functional prototype you can test, pitch, or send straight to development. This is perfect for validation of your product or the market. Whip out your credit card and get started Monday.

🚀 MVP – Your v1 built to spec. You’ve got a solid idea and you want to launch quickly, so we’ll move fast, we’ll move smart, and develop your Minimum Viable Product. Your MVP will be designed, deployed, and monetized based on an agreed budget between $15k and $75k.

🤝 Partner – The Digital Product Studio model. At a fixed fee per month (usually $30-$45k) you get it all – a dedicated, experienced team of experts, available every hour of every week: From Product Management to Design, Marketing to Maintenence, Architecture to AI. It’s your team, and we’re here for one simple goal: To make your business a success.

If you’re ready to roll, let us know, or if there’s anyone you think might be interested we’d appreciate an intro or just send them over to 3advance.com/pricing.