--- title: "This Incredibly Simple Question Causes GPT-5 to Melt Into a Puddle of Pure Confusion" description: "Sam Altman insists that GPT-5 is brilliant — but if you ask it to play an altered version of tic-tac-toe, it glitches out." date: "2025-08-24" modified: "2025-08-24" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/gpt-5-simple-question-confusion" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "chatgpt" - "gpt-5" - "OpenAI" - "sam altman" --- # This Incredibly Simple Question Causes GPT-5 to Melt Into a Puddle of Pure Confusion ![Sam Altman insists that GPT-5 is brilliant — but if you ask it to play an altered version of tic-tac-toe, it glitches out.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* OpenAI CEO Sam Altman [keeps]() [heralding]() GPT-5, the company's latest large language model (LLM), as approaching to human-level intelligence — but when you actually put it to the test, it often turns out to be strikingly dumb, albeit in a verbose way. Just take a recent experiment conducted by Gary Smith, a recently-retired economics professor at Pomona College who [demonstrated for *Mind Matters*]() that GPT-5 became increasingly befuddled when he suggested playing a game of "rotated tic-tac-toe." The game's design is incredibly simple: the grid is "rotated once, 90-degrees to the right before the game starts," as Smith wrote in a transcript of his exchange with the LLM. Common sense, of course, dictates that this makes zero difference to the game; it's still a three-by-three grid with identical rules. Immediately, GPT-5 launched into some bloviating commentary. "Players are so used to the 'upright' tic-tac-toe board that a rotation might subtly change how they scan for threats and opportunities," GPT-5 posited. "Mathematically, rotating the board 90° doesn’t change the set of possible wins — it’s still the same game in terms of outcomes. But psychologically, it could feel different." Oh, brother. GPT-5 went on to claim — contrary to the [folk game theory]() suggesting that opening on corner spots for higher chances of winning — that selecting the center piece "remains the strongest opening move." "But players might mis-evaluate edge vs. corner moves when their orientation is shifted," the chatbot continued, which doesn't make sense at all. Deciding to roll with the punches, Smith asked the LLM if rotating the grid makes it "harder for humans to play well" — and that's when GPT-5 started to lose the plot in earnest. "From a pure strategy standpoint, rotating the board doesn’t change anything. Every winning line (rows, columns, diagonals) just gets mapped to another winning line," GPT-5 wrote.. "So if you’re an AI or a perfect-play human, rotated tic-tac-toe is *identical* to standard tic-tac-toe." Credit where credit's due, this is all correct, if unnecessarily wordy. But then, it wrote that "for humans, the story is different." At this point, the LLM's long-winded sycophancy had started sounding way more like GPT-4o, OpenAI's fan-favorite model, than GPT-5's terseness that characterized it at launch. Perhaps this is the result of the company's decision to make the new model "[warmer and friendlier]()" like 4o, the result of a [user revolt]() over OpenAI's soon-reversed decision to [remove the option]() to toggle between models. Whatever the case, GPT-5 was documented making some pretty obvious mistakes in Smith's experiment that fly in the face of [OpenAI's recent claim]() that interacting with the new model "should feel less like 'talking to AI' and more like chatting with a helpful friend with PhD‑level intelligence." Things went particularly off the rails when GPT-5 helpfully offered to "actually draw rotated tic-tac-toe boards with position labels... so you can see how each transformation messes with recognition," and Smith gave it the go-ahead. As you can see from the graphic Smith generated, shown below, the image it spat out is utterly garbled, not to mention riddled with typos — still a [hallmark]() of its in-chatbot image generator — and even weirder blank grids that made no sense at all. ![A ChatGPT-generated image showing how "rotated tic-tac-toe" works. Three charts show the grids rotated 90 degrees right, 90 degrees left, and 180 degrees. Many include typos like "top-lef" and "rot-left." Underneath, three empty and nonsensical graphs are also show.]() Smith had clearly seen enough by that point, and as the [full transcript]() of his rotated tic-tac-toe exchange with GPT-5 shows, he didn't even respond to the images. "They say that dogs tend to resemble their owners," the columnist wrote. "Chat GPT very much resembles Sam Altman — always confident, often wrong." **More on GPT-5:** [*After Disastrous GPT-5, Sam Altman Pivots to Hyping Up GPT-6*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()