The real jump was 3 to 3.5. 3.5 was the first “chatgpt.” I had tried gpt 3 and it was certainly interesting, but when they released 3.5 as ChatGPT, it was a monumental leap. 3.5 to 4 was also huge compared to what we see now, but 3.5 was really the first shock.

ChatGPT was a proper product, but as an engine, GPT-3 (davinci-001) has been my favorite all the way until 4.1 or so. It's absolutely raw and they didn't even guardrail it.

3.5 was like Jenny from customer service. davinci-001 was like Jenny the dreamer trying to make ends meet by scriptwriting, who was constantly flagged for racist opinions.

Both of these had an IQ of around 70 or so, so the customer service training made it a little more useful. But I mourn the loss of the "completion" way of interacting with AI vs "instruct" or "response".

Unfortunately with all the money in AI, we'll just see companies develop things that "pass all benchmarks", resulting in more creations like GPT-5. Grok at least seems to be on a slightly different route.

This was my experience as well. 3.5 was the point where stackoverflow essentially became obsolete in my workflow.