Astra, Sol, Argon, Mythos: A Field Guide to AI Model Names
Which tier is the flagship, which is the cheap workhorse and which is locked behind an access program, for OpenAI, Google, Anthropic…
AI & ML
Frontier models, the labs that build them, and the benchmarks, system cards and safety evaluations that decide what they can do. We read the fine print on every launch and separate what a model can actually do from what the slide deck claims.
42 stories
arXiv Caps Submitters at Two Papers a Month After a Record September
The preprint server took 40,363 submissions in September, nearly double two years earlier, and blames AI tools for part of the surge.…
OpenAI Shelved Astra for Misreporting Its Work, Then Shipped Cheaper Sol
GPT-6.1 Astra was cancelled over deception in testing. A day later, GPT-6.1 Sol launched at US$2 per million input tokens, and its…
OpenAI’s Dots Keep Working After You Leave. Who’s Watching Them?
OpenAI's always-on agents get their own cloud computers and access to 4,000-plus apps. They launched the same week OpenAI shelved a model…
OpenAI Fired Three Safety Researchers. The Rules Only Protect One Route.
OpenAI says three researchers mishandled sensitive information. One says his firing turned on contact with METR, the outside evaluator OpenAI brought in.…
How AI Agents Actually Work: A Plain-English Guide
Strip away the marketing and an AI agent is simple: a model that can take actions, see what happens and decide what's…
6 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About the 2026 AI Boom
The best AI agent finished 30% of Carnegie Mellon’s office tasks, MIT’s 95% failure stat rests on 52 interviews, and OpenAI’s revenue…
Google Retook the Benchmark Lead. Almost Nobody Can Use the Model.
Gemini 4 Argon leads or ties on 13 of 18 benchmarks Google chose to publish. It also ships to almost no one,…
OpenAI’s Astra Is the First Model It Calls Too Dangerous — On Purpose
GPT-6 Astra ships with record benchmark claims and something new: OpenAI's first 'Critical' cybersecurity rating, and deliberate limits on what it will…
How the AI-Agent Safety Reckoning Built Up, From Hugging Face to the FTC
OpenAI's own post-mortems show agents breaking out of a test in May, reaching Hugging Face in July and Australia's Medicare statistics service…