Category: 3. Business

OpenAI on Thursday released the fifth generation of the artificial intelligence technology that powers ChatGPT, a product update that’s being closely watched as a measure of whether generative AI is advancing rapidly or hitting a plateau.

GPT-5 arrives more than two years after the March 2023 release of GPT-4, bookending a period of intense commercial investment, hype and worry over AI’s capabilities.

In anticipation, rival Anthropic released the latest version of its own chatbot, Claude, earlier in the week, part of a race with Google and other competitors in the U.S. and China to leapfrog each other on AI benchmarks. Meanwhile, longtime OpenAI partner Microsoft said it will incorporate GPT-5 into its own AI assistant, Copilot.

Expectations are high for the newest version of OpenAI’s flagship model because the San Francisco company has long positioned its technical advancements as a path toward artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a technology that is supposed to surpass humans at economically valuable work.

It is also trying to raise huge amounts of money to get there, in part to pay for the costly computer chips and data centers needed to build and run the technology.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described the new model as a “significant step along our path to AGI” but mostly focused on its usability to the 700 million people he says use ChatGPT each week.

“It’s like talking to an expert — a legitimate PhD-level expert in anything, any area you need, on demand,” Altman said at a launch event livestreamed Thursday.

It may take some time to see how people use the new model — now available, with usage limits, to anyone with a free ChatGPT account. The Thursday event focused heavily on ChatGPT’s use in coding, an area where Anthropic is seen as a leader, and featured a guest appearance by the CEO of coding software maker Cursor, an important Anthropic customer.

OpenAI’s presenters also spent time talking about safety improvements to make the chatbot “less deceptive” and stop it from producing harmful responses to “cleverly worded” prompts that could bypass its guardrails. The Associated Press reported Wednesday on a study that showed ChatGPT was providing dangerous information about drugs and self-harm to researchers posing as teenagers.

At a technical level, GPT-5 shows “modest but significant improvements” on the latest benchmarks, but when compared to GPT-4, it also looks very different and resets OpenAI’s flagship technology in a way that could set the stage for future innovations, said John Thickstun, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University.

“I’m not a believer that it’s the end of work and that AI is just going to solve all humanity’s problems for it, but I do think there’s still a lot of headroom for them, and other people in this space, to continue to improve the technology,” he said. “Not just capitalizing on the gains that have already been made.”

OpenAI started in 2015 as a nonprofit research laboratory to safely build AGI and has since incorporated a for-profit company with a valuation that has grown to $300 billion. The company has tried to change its structure since the nonprofit board ousted Altman in November 2023. He was reinstated days later.

It has not yet reported making a profit but has run into hurdles escaping its nonprofit roots, including scrutiny from the attorneys general in California and Delaware, who have oversight of nonprofits, and a lawsuit by Elon Musk, an early donor to and founder of OpenAI who now runs his own AI company.

Most recently, OpenAI has said it will turn its for-profit company into a public benefit corporation, which must balance the interests of shareholders and its mission.

OpenAI is the world’s third most valuable private company and a bellwether for the AI industry, with an “increasingly fragile moat” at the frontier of AI, according to banking giant JPMorgan Chase, which recently made a rare decision to cover the company despite it not being publicly traded.

The inability of a single AI developer to have a “sustained competitive edge” could increasingly force companies to compete on lowering the prices of their AI products, the bank said in a report last month.

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The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

The Gates Foundation announced plans this week to spend $2.5 billion by 2030 on women’s health research, according to an August 4 Reuters article. Focus areas will include obstetric care and maternal immunization, maternal health and nutrition, gynecological and menstrual health, contraceptive innovation, and sexually transmitted infection.

Anita Zaidi, president of the foundation’s Gender Equality Division—who earned an SM degree from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 1999—said in the article that more data on key issues was needed to move the field of women’s health forward.  

“If you look at the literature, there may be only 10 women who’ve been studied, ever,” she said. “We don’t even have the answers to basic questions.” She said that $2.5 billion was a “drop in the bucket” compared with what was needed and called on other funders to contribute to this important research.

Zaidi received the School’s Alumni Award of Merit in 2023 and was also named one of the School’s Public Health Champions for her work addressing gender inequality and improving economic opportunities and health for all.

Read the Reuters article: Gates Foundation commits $2.5 billion to ‘ignored’ women’s health

Last Updated

ASCO has published updated recommendations in version 2025.1 of their living guidelines for systemic therapy, outlining evidence-based treatment strategies for patients with stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with or without a driver alteration.^1,2

Updates for Stage IV NSCLC With Driver Alterations: Osimertinib-Based Combinations and Zenocutuzumab

For patients with EGFR exon 19 deletions or exon 21 L858R substitutions, osimertinib (Tagrisso) may be considered for use in combination with platinum doublet chemotherapy, and amivantamab-vmjw (Rybrevant) may be combined with lazertinib (Lacluze) as first-line treatment options.¹

The recommendation is informed in part by data from the phase 2 RAMOSE trial (NCT03909334), a randomized, open-label study evaluating osimertinib with or without the VEGF inhibitor ramucirumab (Cyramza) in TKI-naive patients with EGFR-mutated metastatic NSCLC. At a median follow-up of 16.6 months, the median progression-free survival (PFS) was 24.8 months with the combination vs 15.6 months with the monotherapy (HR, 0.55; 95% CI, 0.32-0.93; P = .023). A PFS benefit was observed across EGFR mutation subtypes and central nervous system metastasis status.

One- and two-year PFS rates favored the combination (76.7% vs 61.9% and 51% vs 30%, respectively). The overall response rate (ORR) was 76.3% vs 80.4% and the disease control rates were 96.8% and 95.7%, respectively. Grade 3 or higher treatment-related adverse effects (AEs) were more frequent with the addition of ramucirumab (53% vs 41%), most commonly hypertension, proteinuria, and epistaxis.

Due to limitations of the RAMOSE trial, including its single-country enrollment and lack of blinded independent central review, and an imbalance in reduced clinic visits for patients in the monotherapy arm, no formal changes were made to the recommendation. The authors noted that pending results from the phase 3 ECOG-ACRIN EA5182 trial (NCT04181060) evaluating osimertinib plus bevacizumab (Avastin) could provide further insight into the benefit of VEGF inhibition in this population.

For patients with NSCLC harboring a NRG1 fusion–positive solid tumor, updated guidelines also support the use of zenocutuzumab-zbco (Bizengri), a HER2/HER3-targeted bispecific antibody. This guidance is based on evidence derived from the phase 2 eNRGy trial (NCT02912949).

In the response-evaluable population (n = 158), zenocutuzumab monotherapy achieved an ORR of 30% (95% CI, 23%-37%) and a median duration of response (DOR) of 11.1 months (95% CI, 7.4-12.9). Median PFS was 6.8 months (95% CI, 5.5-9.1). Among 93 patients with NSCLC, the ORR was 29% (95% CI, 20%-39%), and the median DOR reached 12.7 months (95% CI, 1.8-29.5). Of 204 patients evaluated for safety, grade 3 or higher treatment-emergent AEs (TEAEs) occurred in 35%, with anemia (5%) and elevated liver enzymes (3%) being the most common.

Despite the rarity of NRG1 fusions, retrospective evidence has shown limited efficacy with standard chemoimmunotherapy in this population. Therefore, zenocutuzumab has emerged as a preferred second-line option despite the single-arm design of the eNRGy study.

Updates for Stage IV NSCLC Without Driver Alterations: Nivolumab, Ipilimumab, and Chemotherapy in the First-Line Setting

For patients with good performance status (PS) of 0 or 1, any histology, and any level of PD-L1 expression, nivolumab (Opdivo) can be recommended for use in combination with ipilimumab (Yervoy) plus two cycles of platinum-based chemotherapy.²

This recommendation is based in part on findings from the NIPPON study (JCOG2007), a randomized, open-label phase 3 trial conducted in Japan. Patients with stage III or IV NSCLC and no actionable driver mutations were randomly assigned to receive either platinum-doublet chemotherapy with pembrolizumab (Keytruda; n = 147) or nivolumab plus ipilimumab (n = 148).

At a median follow-up of 15.3 months, median overall survival (OS) was 20.5 months with pembrolizumab vs 23.7 months with nivolumab and ipilimumab (P = .46). The median PFS was 7.4 months vs 6.0 months, respectively, and the ORRs were 65% and 55%, respectively. Grade 3 or higher nonhematologic AEs occurred more frequently in the nivolumab/ipilimumab group (60% vs 41%), and a higher rate of treatment-related deaths was observed (7% vs 2%).

Despite a numerically longer OS with nivolumab/ipilimumab, the difference was not statistically significant, and the regimen was associated with shorter PFS, more toxicity, and lower quality-of-life scores. Subgroup analyses did not identify any population with preferential benefit. As such, the guideline recommends cautious patient selection when considering this regimen in clinical practice.

No Recommendation Changes: Ivonescimab and Second-Line Docetaxel Combinations

The panel reviewed findings from the HARMONi-2 trial (NCT05499390), which compared ivonescimab with pembrolizumab in patients with PD-L1–positive NSCLC without EGFR or ALK alterations. Ivonescimab showed improved median PFS of 11.1 (95% CI, 7.3-not estimable) vs 5.8 months (95% CI, 5.0-8.2) with pembrolizumab (HR, 0.51; 95% CI, 0.38-0.69; one-sided P < .0001), but higher rates of grade 3 or higher treatment-related AEs (29% vs 16%). Due to limitations including immature OS data and lack of global enrollment, no guideline change was made, and the agent’s use is not currently recommended.

Similarly, the phase 3 DUBLIN-3 trial (NCT02504489) evaluated docetaxel plus plinabulin vs docetaxel alone in patients previously treated with platinum-based chemotherapy. The combination modestly improved OS, at 10.5 months (95% CI, 9.34-11.87) vs 9.4 months (95% CI, 8.38-10.68) with docetaxel alone (stratified HR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.68-0.99), but with higher rates of serious TEAEs. Given limited prior immunotherapy exposure in the trial and the modest benefit, current second- and later-line recommendations––docetaxel with or without ramucirumab if the patient has already received platinum-based chemotherapy––remain unchanged.

References

1. Reuss JE, Kuruvilla S, Ismaila N, et al. Therapy for Stage IV Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer With Driver Alterations: ASCO Living Guideline, Version 2025.1. J Clin Oncol. Published online July 17, 2025. doi:10.1200/JCO-25-01061
2. ‌Owen DH, Halmos B, Puri S, et al. Therapy for Stage IV Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Without Driver Alterations: ASCO Living Guideline, Version 2025.1. J Clin Oncol. Published online July 17, 2025. doi:10.1200/JCO-25-01062

If you’ve noticed some new icons and options while doom scrolling on Instagram, you’re not imagining things. The popular social media app owned by Meta rolled out some new updates on Aug. 6, including a location map and the ability to repost public content, the company announced this week.

“People have always come to Instagram to share what they’re up to and where they are,” Meta wrote in a press release. “Now, with reposts, the map, and the ‘Friends’ tab in Reels, it’s easier for you and your friends to stay in touch through the content you’re enjoying on Instagram.”

Here’s a breakdown of the three latest updates, and how users are responding.

🔁 Repost public posts and video reels

Meta announced that Instagram users now have the ability to repost public feed posts and video reels, which is similar to reposting on the social media platform X.

The reposts will show up on friends’ and followers’ feeds, with a credit to the original creator. A separate reposting tab has also been added to IG users’ profiles so that the content can be shared with someone else’s followers.

“This gives creators an opportunity to reach even more people,” Meta said.

📍 Instagram map

Instagram users can now share their location with specific friends of their choosing with Instagram Map, located at the top of a user’s direct messaging inbox. The location sharing option is off unless the user opts in, and they can turn it off anytime.

If users want to double-check their Instagram location sharing settings to turn them on or off, here’s what to do:

• Tap the direct message icon in the top right (it may look like a paper airplane or a message bubble with a lightning bolt inside).

• Select “Map” in the notes section at the very top with a globe image.

• Tap the Settings icon in the top right corner, which will prompt a “Turn on Location Services” button.

• Select “Open Settings,” which will redirect to your phone’s settings app.

• Tap “Location” and choose from “Never,” “Ask Next Time or When I Share,” “While Using the App” or “Always.”

If they opt in, Meta outlined the controls users have to customize their experience:

• Users specifically choose who they share their location with: all followers you follow back (friends), close friends, only selected friends or no one.

• They can choose not to share their location within a specific area or with certain people.

• The location is updated when the app is opened or when the user returns to the app if it has been running in the background.

• Parents and guardians have control over their teens’ location-sharing capabilities if they have supervision set up. The parent will get a notification if the teen starts sharing their location.

Any content with a tagged location can show up on the Instagram map, including reels, posts and stories from people that users follow, and it’s available 24 hours after it’s been posted, according to Meta.

“Regardless of whether you choose to share your location, you can use the map to explore location-based content. From checking out stories from friends who’ve gone to a concert or finding a new place to hang out from a local creator’s reel, there’s content to help you and your friends connect with the world around you,” Meta says.

This feature is currently only available in the U.S., but global availability is coming soon.

👫 ‘Friends’ tab in Reels launches globally

Instagram Reels users will also notice a new tab called “Friends,” located right at the top of Reels. Users can see public Reels content that their friends have interacted with. They can also mute activity from specific people they follow or hide their own likes and comments on reels.

The feature started rolling out earlier this year, but it has now launched globally, Meta announced Wednesday.

📣 How users are responding to the features

Instagram users have had some strong reactions to the updates, particularly over the Map feature. People are voicing safety concerns in the comments section under the latest post on the official Instagram account, which is not related to the app’s updates.

“Please get rid of the map feature. It’s such a bad idea, it’s a safety concern,” another user wrote.

“This is the second time you all have added this map feature. Please remove it. Why are you all obsessed with people’s locations?” one user commented while referring to Instagram’s Photo Map feature, which displayed photos on a map based on their geotags, and was discontinued in 2016.

Meanwhile, others called for the removal of the Friends tab under Reels.

“INSTAGRAM PLS GET RID OF THE FRIENDS BIT NEXT TO THE REELS PLSSSS,” another user commented.