The jump from GPT4 through o3 to GPT5 was very impressive

Agreed. Their naming conventions in a way really broke the perception of progress. GPT-4 to o3 or GPT-5 is truly impressive. The leap from GPT-4o to GPT-5 is less impressive but GPT-4o is generally recognized as GPT-4.

All that being said, it does seem like OpenAI and Anthropic are on a quest for more dollars by promoting fantasy futures where there is not a clear path from A to B, at least to those of us on the outside.