OpenAI launches Astra, its powerful (and controversial) new model
OpenAI claims that Astra represents "a new frontier on computer and browser use," and that it handles tasks with unmatched "speed, accuracy, and safety."
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OpenAI released Astra, a new AI model described as its most powerful and capable to date, with particular strengths in cybersecurity tasks, coding, and computer browser use. The model is becoming available to customers through various paid plans and an API starting Thursday. A significant controversy surrounds Astra's use of a reasoning technique called opaque recurrence, which obscures a monitoring process called chain of thought that researchers use to understand how and why an AI model makes decisions, raising questions about oversight and transparency. OpenAI president Greg Brockman stated the company believes Astra represents the arrival of artificial general intelligence, describing it as a shift in what work people can delegate to AI, though he acknowledged the definition of AGI has evolved from a contractual concept to a "mission concept or spiritual concept."
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