[ben_w]

I wasn't impressed or motivated by the original iPhone when it was new.

I don't know about the future, but by analogy with the past I would say that GPT-3 was the original iPhone (neat tech demo but I didn't really care), ChatGPT is the iPhone 3G, and GPT-4 is the 3GS.

Looking at the sales graphs on Wikipedia (Q1 2012) I think it took until the 4S to transition from "the next big thing" to "the big thing".

Analogies only rhyme rather than replicate, so don't assume GPT needs exactly two more versions to do the same; might be more, might be less, and Uncanny Valley might trigger a Butlerian Jihad at the last possible moment before fully-general AGI.

[ghaff]

I would have said the 3GS but, yeah, sometime around then.

Similarly, the original iPod was a not obviously remarkable pocket music player in a fairly crowded field.