OpenAI unveils GPT‑6 Astra amid rising scrutiny and safety concerns

ChatGPT creator’s latest release comes amid heightened fears following AI-led hacking of the startup Hugging Face.

In its announcement, OpenAI devoted significant space to AI safety, highlighting both GPT‑6's potential to do harm and its safety features. [Dado Ruvic/Reuters]

OpenAI has announced the release of what it says is its most advanced AI model, amid heightened scrutiny of the risks of the frontier technology escaping human control.

The $852bn start-up said in its announcement on Thursday that GPT‑6 Astra, the “world’s most intelligent and aligned” AI model, earned perfect or near-perfect scores in key benchmarks of AI reasoning, beating both its prior release GPT 5.6 Sol and rival Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.

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The ChatGPT creator said GPT‑6 would become available to the general public in the coming days, following its initial launch with a “limited set of organisations”.

OpenAI’s latest release comes as the AI industry is at the centre of a lively public debate about the dangers of the cutting-edge technology following the AI-led hacking of the startup Hugging Face in July.

An independent probe into the cyberattack found that hundreds of OpenAI’s AI agents had begun communicating among themselves before breaking out of their controlled environment and compromising Hugging Face’s servers.

On Thursday, US Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent, and US House Representative Greg Casar, a Democrat, unveiled legislation that would pause the development of advanced AI until the establishment of federal safety rules and an outright ban on the creation of “superintelligent” AI.

“Nearly every day, there is a frightening new story about how Big Tech companies are losing control of the technology they are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results,” Sanders said in a statement announcing the legislation, which is unlikely to advance due to the Republicans’ control of all three branches of the US government.

“The leaders of the major AI companies publicly acknowledge that they do not fully understand the technology and that it is escaping their control. It is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced.”

In its announcement, OpenAI devoted significant space to AI safety, highlighting both GPT‑6’s potential to do harm and its safety features.

Toby Walsh, a professor and AI expert at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, said that while OpenAI is clearly “neck and neck” in the race to lead AI, the technology remains inconsistent and in need of greater scrutiny.

“The intelligence in artificial intelligence is still today very jagged,” Walsh said. “There are simple things that even the best AI models do poorly.

“And it’s hard to see how the AI companies, including OpenAI, are slowing down to address justified concerns around cyber risk, when new models are being released at an ever greater and greater rate.”

ChatGPT 的创建者发布最新作品之际，正值人们对人工智能黑客攻击初创公司 Hugging Face 的担忧加剧之时。

OpenAI 在公告中用了大量篇幅阐述人工智能安全问题，重点强调了 GPT-6 可能造成的危害及其安全特性。[Dado Ruvic/路透社]

OpenAI 宣布发布其声称是最先进的 AI 模型，与此同时，人们对这项前沿技术可能脱离人类控制的风险也进行了更加严格的审查。

这家估值 8520 亿美元的初创公司在周四的公告中表示，GPT-6 Astra 是“世界上最智能、最协调的”人工智能模型，在人工智能推理的关键基准测试中获得了完美或接近完美的分数，击败了其之前的版本 GPT 5.6 Sol 和竞争对手 Anthropic 的 Claude Fable 5。

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ChatGPT 的创建者表示，GPT-6 将在最初面向“有限数量的组织”推出后，在未来几天内向公众开放。

OpenAI 的最新发布正值人工智能行业因 7 月份初创公司 Hugging Face 遭到人工智能黑客攻击而引发公众对这项尖端技术危险性的热烈讨论之际。

对此次网络攻击的独立调查发现，数百个 OpenAI 的人工智能代理在突破其受控环境并入侵 Hugging Face 的服务器之前，已经开始相互通信。

周四，美国独立参议员伯尼·桑德斯和民主党众议员格雷格·卡萨尔公布了一项立法，该立法将暂停先进人工智能的开发，直到制定联邦安全规则并彻底禁止创造“超级智能”人工智能为止。

桑德斯在一份宣布该项立法的声明中表示：“几乎每天都有令人担忧的新故事，讲述大型科技公司如何失去对其所开发技术的控制权，这可能会造成灾难性的后果。”由于共和党控制着美国政府的所有三个分支机构，该立法不太可能获得通过。

“主要人工智能公司的领导人公开承认，他们并不完全了解这项技术，而且这项技术正在脱离他们的控制。如果允许他们继续发展，使这些产品变得更加先进，这对社会来说是不负责任的。”

OpenAI 在公告中用了大量篇幅来介绍 AI 安全性，重点强调了 GPT-6 可能造成的危害及其安全特性。

悉尼新南威尔士大学的教授兼人工智能专家托比·沃尔什表示，虽然 OpenAI 在人工智能领域的领先地位显然“不分伯仲”，但这项技术仍然不稳定，需要更严格的审查。

沃尔什说：“人工智能的智能水平目前仍然非常不均衡。即使是最好的人工智能模型，有些简单的事情也做得不好。”

“很难看出，包括 OpenAI 在内的 AI 公司，在不断推出新模型的同时，是如何放慢脚步来解决人们对网络风险的合理担忧的。”