We're back to vague posting. This was posted today by OpenAI's Andrew Ambrosiono and is presumably a reference to the upcoming "Astra" model family.
Why is this even worth mentioning? Because Astra's withdrawal, due to security concerns and cybersecurity issues, has likely pushed the release far into the future. And there were indeed good reasons for this.
This post can therefore be interpreted in two ways:
- A solution to the concerns and problems surrounding Astra was found more quickly than expected (a release before the withdrawal was planned for this week), and now they are preparing users for it.
- They want to at least keep the model in the public eye.
Why is this relevant? Astra is the new model family that, along with new pre-training, is finally supposed to put an end to Fable's dominance. OpenAI has taken a huge step forward with Codex and presented a very good model in version 5.6 Sol. Nevertheless, Fable 5 still leads in numerous key benchmarks. And considering the upcoming release, it's safe to assume that a Fable 5.5, or whatever it may be called, will certainly arrive before the IPO. Anthropic's IPO was postponed until September/October, so a new fable isn't far off.
Therefore, to finally pull ahead of Anthropic, a lot depends on Astra, and I dare say that OpenAI is placing a lot of emphasis on Astra's release. In that sense, the "vague post" is more than just a joke. It's a sign. Astra is significant. It (must) remain in the conversation. It's a major breakthrough.