Inside OpenAI’s big play for science
“That’s actually a desirable place to be,” says Weil. “If you say enough wrong things and then somebody stumbles on a grain of truth and then the other person seizes on it and says, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s not quite right, but what if we—’ You gradually kind of find your trail through the woods.” This is Weil’s core vision for OpenAI for Science. GPT-5 is good, but it is not an oracle. The value of this technology is in pointing people in new directions, not coming up with definitive answers, he says. In fact, one of the things OpenAI is now looking at is making GPT-5 dial down its confidence when it delivers a response. Instead of saying Here’s the answer, it might tell scientists: Here’s something to consider. “That’s actually something that we are spending a bunch of time on,” says Weil. “Trying to make sure that the model has some sort of epistemological humility.” Watching the watchers Another thing OpenAI is looking at is how to use GPT-5 to fact-check GPT-5. It’s often …
