GPT-4 Is Here: Analyzing the Announcement

OpenAI just announced GPT-4, and it’s a significant leap forward. I’ve spent the day analyzing the technical report and testing capabilities. Here’s what matters for practitioners.

The Headlines

• Multimodal: GPT-4 accepts images as input (text output only for now)
• Larger context: 8K tokens standard, 32K tokens available
• Better reasoning: Passes bar exam in 90th percentile (GPT-3.5: 10th)
• More reliable: Significantly reduced hallucination in testing
• Already in Bing: Bing Chat has been running on GPT-4 since launch

Benchmark Results

OpenAI tested GPT-4 on professional and academic exams:

Exam	GPT-4	GPT-3.5
Bar Exam	90th percentile	10th percentile
LSAT	88th percentile	40th percentile
GRE Quantitative	80th percentile	25th percentile
AP Calculus BC	43rd percentile	Failed
Codeforces	392 rating	Below 5th percentile

This isn’t just incremental improvement - it’s a capability threshold crossing.

What This Means for Code

I’ve been testing GPT-4 on coding tasks. The improvement is substantial:

# Task: Implement a rate limiter with sliding window

# GPT-4 Response (with explanation)
import time
from collections import deque
from threading import Lock

class SlidingWindowRateLimiter:
    """
    Token bucket rate limiter with sliding window.

    Uses a deque to track request timestamps, providing O(1) amortized
    operations for checking and recording requests.
    """

    def __init__(self, max_requests: int, window_seconds: float):
        """
        Args:
            max_requests: Maximum requests allowed in the window
            window_seconds: Size of the sliding window in seconds
        """
        self.max_requests = max_requests
        self.window_seconds = window_seconds
        self.requests = deque()
        self.lock = Lock()

    def is_allowed(self) -> bool:
        """Check if a request is allowed and record it if so."""
        with self.lock:
            now = time.time()
            cutoff = now - self.window_seconds

            # Remove expired timestamps
            while self.requests and self.requests[0] < cutoff:
                self.requests.popleft()

            if len(self.requests) < self.max_requests:
                self.requests.append(now)
                return True

            return False

    def wait_time(self) -> float:
        """Return seconds to wait before next request is allowed."""
        with self.lock:
            if len(self.requests) < self.max_requests:
                return 0

            oldest = self.requests[0]
            return max(0, oldest + self.window_seconds - time.time())

# GPT-4 also provides usage example and tests
limiter = SlidingWindowRateLimiter(max_requests=100, window_seconds=60)

# Check before making request
if limiter.is_allowed():
    make_api_call()
else:
    wait = limiter.wait_time()
    print(f"Rate limited, wait {wait:.1f}s")

GPT-4’s code is:

• More complete with docstrings and type hints
• Handles edge cases (thread safety, expired cleanup)
• Includes practical usage examples
• Better algorithmic choices

Testing Vision Capabilities

The vision capabilities aren’t publicly available yet (waitlist), but the demos are impressive:

# Expected API format (based on demos)
response = openai.ChatCompletion.create(
    model="gpt-4-vision-preview",
    messages=[
        {
            "role": "user",
            "content": [
                {"type": "text", "text": "What's wrong with this architecture diagram?"},
                {
                    "type": "image_url",
                    "image_url": {"url": "https://example.com/architecture.png"}
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
)

Potential applications:

• Analyzing dashboards and charts
• Understanding system architecture diagrams
• Processing screenshots for debugging
• Extracting data from images

Context Window Impact

The 32K token context is transformative:

def analyze_large_document(document: str, question: str) -> str:
    """Analyze documents up to ~50 pages with GPT-4 32K."""

    # 32K tokens ≈ 24,000 words ≈ 50 pages
    if len(document.split()) > 24000:
        raise ValueError("Document too large for single-pass analysis")

    response = openai.ChatCompletion.create(
        model="gpt-4-32k",
        messages=[
            {
                "role": "system",
                "content": "You are a document analyst. Answer questions about the provided document accurately and cite relevant sections."
            },
            {
                "role": "user",
                "content": f"Document:\n{document}\n\nQuestion: {question}"
            }
        ],
        temperature=0.2
    )

    return response.choices[0].message.content

# Examples of what's now possible in a single pass:
# - Full legal contract analysis
# - Complete codebase review
# - Long-form technical documentation analysis
# - Extended conversation history

Improved Reliability

GPT-4 is more factually grounded:

# GPT-4 system prompt for factual tasks
FACTUAL_SYSTEM_PROMPT = """You are a helpful assistant that provides accurate information.

Rules:
1. If you're not certain about something, say so
2. Distinguish between facts and opinions
3. When appropriate, suggest how the user can verify information
4. If a question is outside your knowledge, acknowledge the limitation

Your knowledge cutoff is September 2021."""

def get_factual_response(question: str) -> dict:
    """Get response with confidence indication."""

    response = openai.ChatCompletion.create(
        model="gpt-4",
        messages=[
            {"role": "system", "content": FACTUAL_SYSTEM_PROMPT},
            {"role": "user", "content": f"{question}\n\nProvide your answer and indicate your confidence level (high/medium/low)."}
        ],
        temperature=0.1
    )

    return {
        "answer": response.choices[0].message.content,
        "model": "gpt-4",
        "note": "Verify important information from authoritative sources"
    }

Pricing Reality

GPT-4 is significantly more expensive:

Model	Input	Output
GPT-3.5 Turbo	$0.002/1K	$0.002/1K
GPT-4 (8K)	$0.03/1K	$0.06/1K
GPT-4 (32K)	$0.06/1K	$0.12/1K

GPT-4 is 15-60x more expensive than GPT-3.5. This changes architecture decisions:

class CostAwareRouter:
    """Route requests based on cost-benefit analysis."""

    def __init__(self, gpt4_budget_daily: float = 100.0):
        self.gpt4_budget = gpt4_budget_daily
        self.gpt4_spent_today = 0.0

    def should_use_gpt4(
        self,
        task_complexity: str,
        estimated_tokens: int,
        quality_critical: bool = False
    ) -> bool:
        """Decide whether to use GPT-4."""

        # Always use GPT-4 for quality-critical tasks
        if quality_critical:
            return True

        # Check budget
        estimated_cost = (estimated_tokens / 1000) * 0.09  # Avg of input/output
        if self.gpt4_spent_today + estimated_cost > self.gpt4_budget:
            return False

        # Use GPT-4 for complex tasks
        complex_tasks = ["code_review", "legal_analysis", "architecture", "debugging"]
        if task_complexity in complex_tasks:
            self.gpt4_spent_today += estimated_cost
            return True

        # Default to GPT-3.5 for simple tasks
        return False

Immediate Actions

1. Request access: GPT-4 API access is limited; join the waitlist
2. Test your prompts: Many prompts need adjustment for GPT-4
3. Update cost models: Budget for 30x cost increase for GPT-4 tasks
4. Identify high-value use cases: Where does quality matter most?
5. Plan for Azure: GPT-4 will come to Azure OpenAI

What I’m Building

Starting today, I’m updating my applications to:

1. Route complex reasoning tasks to GPT-4
2. Keep simple tasks on GPT-3.5
3. Prepare for vision capabilities
4. Leverage longer context for document analysis

The AI capability curve just jumped. Time to adapt.

Resources

• GPT-4 Technical Report
• GPT-4 API Documentation
• GPT-4 System Card