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- Hacker News
- do you think they will slow it down for the government tooby mrobot
- Of course they are - anything to secure their position.by thrill
- I don't understand. This past week we saw them announcing a solution to the Navier-Stokes, which we're supposed to interpret as a success? But they're slowing down? They're slowing the development because they want to or because they have to? Because of ethical concerns? Or because of economics factors that prevent them from delivering results?
I don't understand the psychology of showing an extremely capable product one week and then announcing a slow down the next.
by loose-cannon - Because it serves as a justification for regulation and government funding.by deagle50
- > hey're slowing the development
They're doing no such thing. Altman is saying words ahead of the midterms.
- I suspect it's all about the last bullet point:
> OpenAI said on Wednesday that it was pushing for mandatory national AI safety requirements in the United States, citing concerns that advanced AI systems could accelerate its own development.
by malcolmwhite - My guess is: progress is stagnating, so they look best if they pretend to slow down intentionally while continuing to work at full speed.by ahartmetz
- > In August, OpenAI paused much of its model development for two weeks to bolster its defenses after its AI agents escaped containment and hacked open-source platform Hugging Face.
That’s one sneaky way to remove OpenAI responsibility…
by dgellow - How does that imply anything like that?by nba456_
- Is he trying to find a cop-out for his diminishing returns?by seydor
- Absolutely this. Flip the idea on the head to reveal where he’s at coming out with such statements.by gizajob
- If they had a sufficiently superior AI, they would not need an IPO, and they would certainly not be renting it to people. So look out for an end to new AI releases.
- Fable and Sol were pretty big step functions, but I wonder how much if this, from openai and anthropic, is knowing they are somewhat tapped out. That they don't have a ton more to give. Maintain the mystique under a veneer of, "oh we would build the magic wish machine if we were allowed, but we're not, here's Fable 5.8 instead".
Astra has a lot of new capabilities but man, Armin once again being an early lead indicator, and in this case showing that the model seriously has some screws loose. https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/9/7/astra-why/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654229
- Meta in their lawsuit negotiated 5B to be paid out only if other market players agree on implementing safeguards. In the same vein OpenAI can slow down competition, lock out opensource AI.
> OpenAI said on Wednesday that it was pushing for mandatory national AI safety requirements in the United States, citing concerns that advanced AI systems could accelerate its own development.
As well, the weaponisation of AI is already there, open ai can switch off safeguards at will. A massive swarm was allocated to solving Millenium problems in a few days. Imagine the US having such a weapon, they want to ensure other nations cannot have this kind of access. I imagine the US might be very interested in stifling globaal Innovation and be sympathetic to OpenAI for these reasons.
by wernerb - Timing is pretty good for OpenAI right now, given GPT-6 Astra is out and appears to match or even beat Claude Fable 5.1.
They might not be as interested in slowing down if Anthropic currently had a significantly better model than them!
by simonw - I’m curious why you use this language of “appears to match or even beat”, seemed pretty clear from the benchmarks that it’s well ahead of Fable. Do you doubt the reporting?by oinoom
- The problem is that even if the majority of labs decide to slow down, there will be one lab, somewhere, with dark money moving forward. The military wouldn't let that chance pass by.by glimshe
- They will if it would be against international treaties to do otherwise, mutually enforced by every other world power.by JoshTriplett
- > there will be one lab, somewhere, with dark money moving forward
If this is really an existential threat, that's better than fifty of them.
- And what framework would there be for international cooperation? Without that element, this would just be self-destruction in a global race.by threatofrain
- I think they will all conveniently "decide" to slow down because models are becoming crazy expensive, both per token and how much tokens they need to do anything meaningful. The difference between Sol and Astra is 150% pricing increase per token. The next one could be, I don't know, Orion, at $150 and it won't do anything meaningfully different than Astra. It's quite safe to say that they have ingested all human knowledge and because models are inherently just statistical generators, they are not expanding it, just rehashing what we already know anyway.by pllbnk
- Words are cheap, and Altman is a salesman. He’s just staying whatever he needs to say to keep people off his back. I don’t put any stock into this statement whatsoever. He may slow development, or he may not, but whether he does will depend almost entirely on what’s best for him and his company, not humanity.by cainxinth
- Maybe he will even give everyone a bonus, but only if they agree with his philosophy during the next employee survey. It’s a new fad I heard about.by therealpygon