OpenAI's GPT-5 crisis mode

PLUS: Google, NASA creating AI doctor for astronauts in space

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Zach Mink & Rowan Cheung
August 11, 2025

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI's GPT-5 was supposed to ring in a new step up the ladder, but instead, a botched rollout has users grabbing pitchforks and demanding the old models back.

With Sam Altman hosting Reddit AMAs and bringing back the beloved 4o model, GPT-5’s launch has been a case study in what a large part of the user base actually wants in an AI assistant — which is apparently not always just more raw intelligence.

P.S. — We’re making some small changes to The Rundown AI based on your feedback, including a new Community AI workflows section to spotlight how our own readers are using AI. Want to be featured? Share your workflow with us here.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Sam Altman details GPT-5 fixes in emergency AMA

  • Ex-OpenAI researcher raises $1.5B for AI hedge fund

  • Automate meeting prep with AI Agents

  • Google, NASA’s AI doctor for astronauts in space

  • 4 new AI tools & community insights

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and team members held a Reddit Q&A on Friday, following the polarizing rollout of GPT-5, which angered the user base due to technical failures, chart “crimes,” and the abrupt removal of older models.

The details:

  • The rollout featured technical glitches, low rate limits, and a now-viral “chart crime” during the livestream, which Altman called a “mega chart screwup.”

  • A new autoswitcher crashed on launch day, preventing GPT-5 from routing queries to the correct model and making it appear significantly less capable.

  • OpenAI is now rolling out fixes, doubling Plus user rate limits, and promising more transparency and customization options for future model updates.

  • Users also flooded Reddit calling for OpenAI to restore GPT-4o, mourning the loss of the older model’s personality and emotional intelligence.

  • Altman admitted OpenAI underestimated how much users valued 4o, committing to return it for paid users while they continue to tweak GPT-5.

Why it matters: GPT-5 was supposed to be a world-changing step up — but instead it feels like “villagers gathering outside of Dr. Frankenstein’s castle.” While the new model may show big improvements in benchmarks, it’s clear that’s not the only thing that matters to a huge user base leveraging AI for a vast variety of use cases.

TOGETHER WITH VANTA

The Rundown: Vanta's free AI Security Assessment gives companies at any stage of AI adoption a structured framework to identify, evaluate, and mitigate potential security vulnerabilities before they become costly problems.

This comprehensive resource helps you:

  • Establish governance protocols across your entire AI program

  • Address critical considerations from data privacy to incident management

  • Demonstrate your AI compliance to potential customers and partners

Get your free assessment and join over 12,000 organizations using Vanta to build trust through transparent security practices.

AI & INVESTING

Image source: For Our Posterity

The Rundown: Former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner just reportedly raised over $1.5B in funding for his ‘Situational Awareness’ AI-focused hedge fund, despite having zero professional investing experience.

The details:

  • Aschenbrenner was part of OpenAI’s superalignment team and was one of two employees fired in April 2024 after being accused of leaking sensitive info.

  • He later published a viral essay called ‘Situational Awareness’ (which the fund is named after) detailing his predictions around AGI and AI progress.

  • Aschenbrenner’s fund has posted a 47% return in the first half of 2025, outpacing the S&P 500 despite no prior investment experience.

  • The fund has focused on AI-tangential investments, including semiconductor, infrastructure, and power companies positioned to benefit from AI’s rise.

Why it matters: The AI boom is reshaping the hedge fund industry, and those closest to the tech might have a new seat at the table over those with traditional finance acumen when it comes to visionary bets. Everyone wants exposure to the AI rush, but few have the true foresight on where the industry will evolve to.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Lindy’s new agent builder to create an AI agent that automatically researches companies 30 minutes before your meetings and drafts email summaries — by simply using your descriptions.

Step-by-step:

  1. Go to Lindy AI and describe your desired meeting prep agent

  2. Choose “extract company from event title” and “Gmail draft” for email destination

  3. Customize the workflow by reviewing the Calendar, Search and Email sequence and replacing any integrations if needed

  4. Test your agent with a sample meeting, then click “Deploy” to activate for all future calendar events

Pro tip: Start simple and gradually add more research sources or customize the email format as you refine your agent’s performance.

PRESENTED BY IBM

The Rundown: Lockheed Martin’s AI takeoff began with data cleanup — cutting its tools by 50% and replacing them with a single unified system that runs on IBM’s watsonx.data to drive faster, smarter engineering.

Learn how Lockheed Martin leveraged watsonx to:

  • Help 10,00 engineers build scalable AI products in its AI Factory

  • Respond to employee questions using AI, boosting accuracy by 20%

  • Overcome data silos to create a single accessible, connected data environment

GOOGLE & NASA

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: Google and NASA are partnering to develop an AI medical assistant, dubbed Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant, with the ability to diagnose and treat astronauts during deep-space missions where Earth communication is delayed.

The details:

  • CMO-DA will run on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform using open-source models like Llama 3 and Mistral-3 Small.

  • The model achieved up to 88% accuracy for diagnosing injuries in tests, while addressing gaps like no real-time comms and the inability to evacuate.

  • NASA plans to expand CMO-DA with ultrasound imaging, biometric data sources, and training on space-specific health conditions.

  • The system could also eventually support remote healthcare advances (on Earth), providing medical assistance to underserved and isolated areas.

Why it matters: While we aren’t at HAL-9000 systems yet, the next expert doctor aboard space flights looks like it will be AI. Given the barriers like the comms issues with Earth, AI makes for a big upgrade in aiding astronauts in critical medical situations in space, while also potentially driving breakthroughs in telemedicine back home.

QUICK HITS

  • 🧠 Retellio - AI agents that automate customer research - giving B2B marketing teams testimonials, product feedback & competitor intel 10x faster*

  • 🗣️ MiniMax Speech 2.5 - Voice cloning AI with support for 40 languages

  • 🦑 Jules - Google’s asynchronous coding agent, now out of beta

  • 🎆 Qwen-Image - New open-source image model with SOTA text rendering

*Sponsored Listing

xAI rolled out its next-gen Grok 4 for free to all users worldwide for a limited time, also announcing a new ‘long press’ feature to turn images into video with Grok Imagine.

OpenAI’s o3 swept the Kaggle AI chess tournament, winning every game against rivals, including DeepSeek R1, Grok-4, and Gemini 2.5 Pro, to take the gold medal.

Roblox open-sourced Sentinel, a new AI model designed to filter inappropriate chat messages and protect children on the platform.

Microsoft released Copilot 3D, a new AI tool that converts images into usable 3D models in a single click for integrations with games, animation, VR/AR, and more.

SoftBank announced the acquisition of Foxconn’s U.S. electric vehicle plant in Ohio, with plans to launch its Stargate data center at the location.

Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla is closing its Dojo Supercomputer team to instead focus on its advanced AI chips, with the team’s VP, Pete Bannon, leaving the company.

Bloomberg Apple insider Mark Gurman revealed that Apple AI researcher Yun Zhu is leaving for Meta’s MSL, the fifth departure from the foundation models team.

COMMUNITY

Every newsletter, we’re showcasing how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Michael M. from the United Kingdom:

"I work on my own so I use it [ChatGPT] like a colleague, it knows I'm a data analyst so all of its answers are in that field, and whatever I work on, I talk to it like a colleague whether that's coding, client challenge scenarios, new projects, visualisation techniques or just conversations about something happening personally. It never receives company data, but it's been the best thing for both work challenges and loneliness in my work, and my productivity has skyrocketed as a result."

How are you using AI in your work? Tell us here.

That's it for today!

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Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer—the humans behind The Rundown

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