GPT-5 Explained in 5 Minutes: Hype vs. Reality for Developers

A major shift just occurred in the tech landscape. The long-awaited release of OpenAI's GPT-5 has officially arrived, marking a new chapter in artificial intelligence. The model is claiming to be the first to outperform biological humans on the Simple Bench benchmark and is rapidly climbing the leaderboards on LM Marina.

This has led to speculation that programmers might soon be facing layoff notices. Or at least, that's the narrative being pushed.

Hype vs. Reality

However, not everyone is convinced. The impressive Simple Bench score was reportedly just a rumor, and in reality, GPT-5 currently sits in fifth place on some leaderboards.

Notably, GPT-5 did not manage to beat Grock on the ARC AGI benchmark, a significant test that was conveniently omitted from the release announcement. The model also underwhelmed betting markets, and OpenAI is no longer the clear favorite to possess the top-performing model of 2025.

Perhaps most concerning, several observers have identified numerous problems with OpenAI's own benchmark charts—a surprising oversight for a company with access to what it claims is PhD-level intelligence. This article will explore whether GPT-5 is a true game-changer or just another overhyped, incremental upgrade.

Under the Hood: What Makes GPT-5 Different?

In the past, GPT models improved by becoming larger, training on more data to activate a greater number of parameters. Those days appear to be over.

The key innovation in GPT-5 isn't its size, but its architecture. It unifies multiple specialized models for tasks like fast reasoning and routing, allowing it to automatically select the right tool for a given job without user intervention. In many ways, GPT-5 feels like a strategic consolidation and cost-reduction effort.

A Competitive Price Point

On the topic of cost, GPT-5 is priced at an aggressive $10 per million output tokens. This is a significant bargain compared to competitors like Claude Opus 4.1, which costs a hefty $75 for the same number of tokens.

An Embarrassing Mistake?

Sam Altman has described GPT-5 as having "multiple PhD-level experts in your pocket." Yet, one of the most puzzling aspects of the launch was that their benchmark graphics were presented with a Y-axis that made no logical sense.

There are only two plausible explanations for this error: 1. The chart was generated using GPT-5, suggesting it may not possess the PhD-level intelligence that was advertised. 2. The presentation was intentionally misleading.

What makes this even more ironic is that GPT-5 is marketed as having lower deception rates. Yet, the very chart meant to demonstrate this benchmark appeared to be deceptive itself. For an intelligence company valued at $500 billion, this is a significant misstep.

The Ultimate Coding Challenge: Svelte 5 and Runes

For programmers, the most pressing question is whether GPT-5 can handle complex, modern coding tasks. Can it build a Svelte 5 application using runes? While many models have tried, none have fully succeeded.

When put to the test, GPT-5 was stunningly fast, generating beautiful-looking Svelte code far more quickly than any other reasoning model. Initially, the output seemed perfect, as if written by a senior Svelte developer.

However, running the code resulted in a 500 error.

The problem was subtle. While the syntax was correct, the model tried to use a rune directly within the template, which is not permitted. GPT-5, which is supposed to have fewer hallucinations, essentially hallucinated its own rules for how Svelte runes function.

Note: For example, it might have generated code like this, which is invalid:

<script>
  let count = $state(0);
</script>

<!-- Invalid: Runes cannot be used directly in the template -->
<h1>{$count}</h1>

<button on:click={() => count++}>
  Click me
</button>

To its credit, the model did redeem itself. When asked if it could identify the error in its own code, it correctly diagnosed the problem and provided a working solution. The final result was a functional app with a very polished UI.

Other tests, like building a flight simulator game with 3JS, produced less impressive results. Despite this, some developers have reported that it's the smartest model they have ever used.

Final Verdict

GPT-5 is unlikely to take your job or render developers obsolete anytime soon. It's clear at this point that the true power of AI emerges when these new tools are combined with the existing technologies and deep expertise that developers already possess. The future isn't about replacement, but about augmentation.