OpenAI Astra Sparks AGI Debate, Anthropic Pushes Into Payments Tech & How AI Threats Shift Corporate Budgets

Akash Pasricha (0:13)

Welcome, everyone, to The Information's TITV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Tuesday, September 8th. Today on the show, we are going to talk about the initial reactions to OpenAI's Astra model. We also have some exclusive reporting for you on Anthropix to push into payment-related tools. We'll then discuss our reporting on a joint venture that Coatue is talking about with AI chip startup MatX. We're also looking at how escalating cyber threats from AI are forcing big companies to rethink where they spend on cybersecurity. To close out the show, we're going to dive into how AWS is drawing spend away from Microsoft Azure following its overhaul of its own AI services, and Amazon Bedrock. It's going to be a great show, so let's get right on into it.

OpenAI's newest Astra model has been out for a couple of days now. There has been a lot of chatter about whether or not this model is AGI.

I want to bring on Stephanie Palazzolo, who authors our AI agenda newsletter for a conversation about that. Stephanie, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here.

Stephanie Palazzolo (1:21)

Great to be here.

Akash Pasricha (1:22)

Okay. We haven't asked you yet about Astra and how people are finding it. What are the initial reactions?

Stephanie Palazzolo (1:31)

Yeah. Initial reactions, people are definitely very impressed. I think Astra, OpenAI spoke a lot about how the jump between the last model, GPT 5.6, Soul and Astra, was going to be quite a big one. I think that's definitely true. So Astra, I think, really shines in areas like 3D modeling and software engineering. So I spoke with some people that were early testers of it, and they said one difference that some of them notice, I think, between this one and Fable 3.1, which is Anthropix latest model, is that they said that with Fable, it was better whenever maybe you didn't have a super detailed idea of what you wanted to do. So maybe you have a more higher level task like, make this website look prettier or make this app more user friendly.

Versus I think Astra was a lot better whenever you had very detailed instructions and you wanted to do something very specific. And so just some pros and cons, but I think overall people are very impressed with Astra and seem very excited about it.

Akash Pasricha (2:40)

Seems like they were really pushing the voice capabilities in their commercial. I mean, is it better on that front as well?

Stephanie Palazzolo (2:49)

Yeah. So it does seem in the commercial there is, in the demo video, there was a lot of hype and emphasis around voice and computer use, which is the model's ability to navigate your computer. Overall, I have heard good things about that, but honestly, I think more people, at least I'm talking to, are more interested in trying it out for software engineering versus voice.

Akash Pasricha (3:10)

Got it. Okay. So now the big question that I guess I was seeing trending online over the weekend was, is this model AGI? I mean, what has OpenAI said in terms of whether or not it thinks it's AGI? I saw Jensen seems to be endorsing the idea that it is AGI.

Is it that good?

Stephanie Palazzolo (3:31)

Yeah. Well, definitely OpenAI wants you to think so.

So whenever I wrote my brief on this, I did mention one interesting thing was during the press briefing, Greg Brockman was there. He was very much pushing that this is AGI, added the call by saying in a joking way, like welcome to the AGI era. But I think this is obviously a very different shift than, it feels like maybe with the last couple models, OpenAI has been very careful about their wording saying, we're getting close, we're 80 percent of the way there versus this time, they seem much more willing to just straight up say, we believe this is AGI.

Akash Pasricha (4:13)

Is the reason for that, is that at all related to the whole reframing of the agreement with Microsoft, that they can now say that we are at AGI freely? Because I'm trying to think about the communications angle here. They removed that from the partnership agreement with Microsoft, so that no longer impacts what they have to pay Microsoft in terms of revenue share. That's one angle to this, but I'm also thinking about the social implications of all this. Why do you think they're so willing to say that this is AGI now?

Stephanie Palazzolo (4:45)

Yeah, so as you mentioned, there's definitely less risks to declaring AGI now, that term has been removed from Microsoft agreement. I think in terms of socially, why now?