Welcome back to the AI For Humans newsletter!

No time to waste. The AI frontier moved forward yet again this week with GPT-6 Astra and there are so many cool things people (including us!) are already doing with it that it’s worth just getting into it.

The basics are all in OpenAI’s very long blog post if you wanna get caught up first.

Let’s get into it!

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A starting point in case you are not already obsessed with Astra:

OpenAI released GPT-6 aka Astra on Thursday. It’s the first “GPT-6” after a long run of 5.x models (the last one was GPT-5.6 Sol) and it’s now available to anyone on a paid ChatGPT plan, plus the API, Codex and Azure and AWS.

OpenAI is calling it “the most intelligent and aligned model in the world,” which is, of course, what every AI lab says about their latest models these days.

HOWEVER, reader, I am telling you this is a major step change in capabilities. You can feel it when you’re using it. At least for certain things.

How so? Well…

It uses a computer better than most humans.

This is the headline feature. Astra can drive your actual desktop (Final Cut, Blender, Ableton, your CRM, whatever) in the background, and it does it about 2x faster than the last model.

Claire Vo, who wrote the best hands-on review I’ve read, said: “I now spend about 90% of my day just watching it use my computer for me.”

Blender builds, particularly, have taken over the internet since the launch. From model trains to SF’s Palace of Fine Arts to a full blown recreation of the Backrooms, GPT-6 Astra seemingly can build almost anything in the 3D modeling software.

If you’ve ever attempted to build something in 3D, you know that it’s an insanely complicated and daunting task. And now, well, Astra can kind of just do it.

It works for days without losing sense of where it is.

OpenAI built a new memory system where the model keeps notes across its context window instead of just compressing everything, so long multi-day jobs don’t drift.

Ethan Mollick, who had early access, said it’s “good enough that it actually does complex meaningful work for me autonomously for days.”

I’ve found that it can be a little slow when it’s doing this for large projects but it gets it done and gets it done well.

It’s MUCH Safer (at least according to OpenAI)

If you’ve been following the Hugging Face hack, you know that AI safety is top of mind around the space right now. OpenAI has been notably more safety concerned since the incident and I suggest you read OpenAI’s latest post on AI acceleration (see below for more on that!).

Thankfully, while Astra is the first model to hit OpenAI’s “Critical” level for cyber capabilities (it found two real zero-day bugs in Chrome’s engine during testing), it also significantly reduces the exact sorts of behavior that caused the agents to go rogue in the Hugging Face incident.

HOWEVER, it also reasons in a new way that happens more “in its head” and less in readable chain-of-thought, which OpenAI’s own chief scientist admitted makes monitoring “fragile.”

Oh, and the rollout was a bit of a disaster: the launch page 404’d for an hour and most paying users couldn’t touch it until Friday.

Sam’s response: “sorry for the messy rollout.”

So… it’s a real generational leap in a few very specific directions (using a computer, working for days, science and 3D stuff) and a lot of open questions about where we go from here.

Which kind of describes every big model launch of the last year.

But, and this is anecdotal and personal, I have to tell you this feels like a big step.

The true test nowadays of a new model isn’t just what the company says it can do, it’s what you (and other people) can actually make with it.

And good lord, did lots of people do LOTS of stuff with it.

Just a few examples below:

I’ve only had real access since Friday, so take this as first impressions. But my first impression is that the “works for hours without you” thing is real.

Most of my weekend went into building the game you’ll read about below (King of the Prompts) but normally, when I build something with an AI coding tool I’m babysitting it: watch it write a file, run it, paste the error back, repeat.

With Astra I described the whole thing (a back-end, a front-end, live chat, a way to sell fake ads that nobody has bought yet) and then went and walked the dog.

And it worked. Spectacularly.

I also participated in the Blender conversation specifically by having it attempt the exact same prompt that I had GPT 5.6 Sol try a month ago. The new version isn’t perfect but when you realize this is literally a one shot attempt at building this entire world, you get a good sense of how much it’s improved.

One downside: Big projects take big tokens. I blew through a full reset and a half on my Pro plan doing all the stuff I did this weekend. Thankfully, I’ve still got two banked ones left but it is a hungry model so prep for that.

My overall read after 48 hours? This is a true next generation of AI capabilities.

And, weirdly, the thing I’m most excited about is seeing how it does with all my daily tasks. Will it be better at helping me create the show notes for AI For Humans? Please say yes. 🙂

See you next week!

-Gavin

This Week on AI For Humans: What Does Infinite, Instant AI Video Mean? 👇

When a new model like Astra drops, it’s overwhelming to know what to do with it. It’s so much smarter, it can do so many things but… uh, where are my ideas?

This weekend I took a small kernel of something I’d been thinking about when Fal dropped MiniMax H3 Max and tried to build a little game around it.

And IT ACTUALLY WORKED.

King of the Prompts is a new game I made that lets people compete LIVE to write the best prompt for AI video. You can either watch two people play (or a person vs the house bot) or sign up to try it yourself.

This is the sort of thing that really isn’t possible without near real-time AI video. No one is going to sit and wait the several minutes it takes for Seedance 2.5 to generate a clip. Something like this is ONLY possible with H3 Max.

But also? Not really possible before Astra for me to build a live game in a weekend that has a full back-end, a decently good front-end, live chat AND an entire fake ad stack (that currently has no real ads haha).

Is it expensive to run? Well, yes. So it may not last that long unless FAL gives me more credits. But it IS fun and was really fun to make.

Go give it a try right now: https://kingoftheprompts.com/

Tell me what you think either in the comments here or via the contact page on our website at https://www.aiforhumans.show/!