OpenAI is now slower to respond, but hopefully more accurate

OpenAI's new o1 model will trade speed for accuracy

(Credit: OpenAI)

• 🤖 OpenAI’s new model is another big step forward for artificial intelligence

• 🤔 It promises to spend “more time thinking through problems”

• 👏 That means slower but far more accurate responses

• 🆕 ChatGPT o1 is now available to preview

OpenAI has a new model that won’t be as quick to respond to your questions, but should hopefully iron out the mistakes it’s been prone to making.

Called o1, the new OpenAI model can perform complex reasoning tasks more effectively, and will “spend more time thinking through problems before they respond, much like a person would,” said OpenAI on its website.

The new model should also be able to solve harder problems than previous models in science, coding, and math, and also correctly identify how many ‘Rs’ are in the word strawberry.

OpenAI said the model performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. It also performs dramatically better than GPT-40, correctly solving 83% of problems instead of just 13%.

OpenAI clarified that as o1 is an early model and in preview, which means it still doesn’t have many of the features that make ChatGPT useful, like browsing the web for information or uploading files and images.

However, for more complex reasoning tasks, OpenAI is so confident in the new level of AI capability that it reset the counter back to 1 and named the series OpenAI o1.

ChatGPT Plus and Team users can access o1 models in ChatGPT today, and both o1-preview and o1-mini can be selected manually in the model picker. ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu users will get access to both models from September 16.

• Up next: Scarlett Johansson is suing OpenAI – claims it used her voice without permission

Adam Vjestica is The Shortcut’s Senior Editor. Formerly TechRadar’s Gaming Hardware Editor, Adam has also worked at Nintendo of Europe as a Content Marketing Editor, where he helped launch the Nintendo Switch. Follow him on X @ItsMrProducts.