OpenAI cancels release of AI model GPT-6.1 Astra, citing safety concerns

OpenAI has announced it will not release its latest AI model after flagging safety risks during in-house testing, industry’s latest move to slow the rollout of the controversial frontier technology.

The AI giant’s announcement on Monday came as debate continues about the potential for AI to do catastrophic harm following a slew of incidents involving AI agents going rogue.

Saachi Jain, OpenAI’s head of safety systems, said GPT-6.1 Astra had failed to meet company standards for acting in accordance with human wishes during internal testing.

“For anything regarding safety and alignment, there’s a trade off,” Jain said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera.

“You really do need to find what’s the right line between staying within scope, but also avoiding laziness in terms of how the model actually pursues tasks even when it hits friction.”

While GPT-6.1 Astra improved from its predecessor in some areas, Jain said, the model did not meet the bar for “scope and authorization, and how it communicates back to the user about the type of work it’s done”.

“Of course we want to make sure our model development is safe no matter whether that’s in the company, or when we ship it to users,” Jain said.

“But when we ship it to users, we have an extremely high bar in terms of safety and alignment.”