What’s happening with the latest releases of large language models? Is the industry hitting the edge of the scaling laws, and do the current benchmarks provide reliable performance assessments? This week on the show, Jodie Burchell returns to discuss the current state of LLM releases. The most recent release of GPT-5 has been a wake-up call for the LLM industry. We discuss how the current scaling of these systems is reaching a diminishing edge. Jodie also shares how many AI model assessments and benchmarks are flawed. We also take a sober look at the productivity gains from using these tools for software development within companies. We discuss how newer developers should consider additional factors when looking at the current job market. Jodie digs into how economic changes and rising interest rates are influencing layoffs and hiring freezes. Then we share a wide collection of resources for you to continue exploring these topics. This episode is sponsored by InfluxData. Course Spotlight: Exploring Python Closures: Examples and Use Cases Learn about Python closures: function-like objects with extended scope used for decorators, factories, and stateful functions. Topics: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:03:00 – Recent conferences and talks 00:04:18 – What’s going on with LLMs? 00:06:06 – What happened with the GPT-5 release? 00:08:14 – Simon Willison - 2025 in LLMs so far 00:09:00 – How did we get here? 00:10:37 – OpenAI’s and scaling laws 00:12:25 – Pivoting to post-training 00:16:01 – Some history of AI eras 00:17:54 – Issues with measuring performance and benchmarks 00:22:19 – Chatbot Arena 00:24:06 – Languages are finite 00:26:22 – LLMs and the illusion of humanity 00:30:41 – Sponsor: InfluxData 00:31:34 – Types of solutions to move past these limits 00:36:57 – Does AI actually boost developer productivity? 00:44:19 – Agentic Al Programming with Python 00:48:02 – Results of non-programmers vibe coding 00:50:18 – Back to the concept of overfitting 00:52:52 – The money involved in training 00:56:50 – Video Course Spotlight 00:58:21 – Deepseek and new methods of training 01:01:02 – Quantizing and fitting on a local machine 01:04:48 – The layoffs and the economic changes 01:10:32 – AI implementation failures 01:21:01 – Don’t doubt yourself as a developer 01:24:06 – What are you excited about in the world of Python? 01:25:39 – What do you want to learn next? 01:26:42 – What’s the best way to follow your work online? 01:27:04 – Thanks and goodbye Survey: Listener Survey - Help Shape the Future of the Real Python Podcast Show Links: EuroPython 2025 - July 14th-20th 2025 - Prague, Czech Republic & Remote Episode #232: Exploring Modern Sentiment Analysis Approaches in Python GPT-5: Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming. And that’s not the worst of it. GPT 5’s Rocky Launch Highlights AI Disillusionment - IEEE Spectrum 2025 in L