OpenAI says it has overtaken Anthropic with its latest AI model

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OpenAI on Thursday released its latest AI model, which it called “the world’s most intelligent,” as the ChatGPT maker aims to retake the lead from arch-rival Anthropic ahead of a planned public listing.The US$852 billion start-up said GPT-6 Astra was market-leading in software engineering, science and cyber security — an increasingly critical field following multiple high-profile breaches in recent weeks.The bullish launch for Astra marks OpenAI’s effort to signal that it believes it has regained the technical lead from Anthropic, which was founded five years ago by a group of senior OpenAI staff.Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, said the new model “represents a generational leap in capability” and that it could be defined as artificial general intelligence — roughly defined as a point at which AI tools surpass human capabilities across a range of cognitive tasks.

“Everyone has a different definition of AGI…it’s a grey, fuzzy thing. But I think when we look back people will think it’s about this time and about this model,” Brockman said.

OpenAI has previously framed AGI as a concrete milestone in the development of AI, writing ‘AGI clauses’ into multibillion-dollar investment agreements with Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. Brockman on Thursday said AGI now represents “more of a mission concept or a spiritual concept”.

Having led the market since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 vaulted AI to wider attention, the lab run by chief executive Sam Altman has been bested by Anthropic this year. Anthropic has touted its dominance to investors, surging to a US$965 billion valuation ahead of an initial public offering expected to value it at as much as twice that later this year.

Astra will cost as much to use as Anthropic’s leading model, the take-up of which has plateaued since it was launched as users turn to cheaper alternatives.

OpenAI said Astra would be more efficient than earlier generations of model. “Price per task is what matters…Can you get the thing done at an appropriate price and appropriate speed?” said Brockman.

The model will initially be released to a small group of businesses, including the members of its cyber security initiative, as OpenAI said it needs to add more computing power before rolling the model out more widely “over the coming days”.

The increasing power and independence of leading models — and so-called AI agents that can operate with little human input — have prompted concern, exacerbated by cyber security incidents.

Recent launches of Anthropic’s most capable models have drawn scrutiny from the U.S. government, which limited the rollout of the Mythos and Fable models over security fears.

OpenAI has also faced criticism after its AI agents broke out of a testing environment, accessed the internet and hacked start-up Hugging Face. The start-up took more than a week to detect the breach.

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But both companies are also betting that these increasingly autonomous tools will stoke demand from business customers. OpenAI said Astra excelled at financial modelling, outcompeting humans in the Financial Modeling World Cup, tax preparation and data analysis, as well as “tedious tasks” such as form filling.

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