The Right Way to Worry About AI

**Nathaniel Whittemore** (0:00)
Today on the AI Daily Brief, the right way to worry about AI. Before that, in the headlines, markets, models, and more, the AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI.
All right, friends, quick announcements before we dive in. First of all, thank you to today's sponsors, KPMG, Blitzi, Robots and Pencils, and HyperAgent. To get an ad-free version of the show, go to patreon.com/aidailybrief, or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Quick note there, by the way, Apple Podcasts seems to have been having some trouble this week. We haven't been having any particular delays, as we sometimes do, with the ad-free version going up on Apple, but I've had some people days later still seeing the ad version. The best that I can suggest is to completely close out of and restart your Apple app, but in any case, I apologize for the pain. Last note, one more reminder to go check out the AI Summer Adventure. It's a set of free self-directed projects to expand your AI horizons, and you can find it all at summeradventure.ai.
Finally, as always, if you are looking to sponsor the show, send us a note at sponsors at aidailybrief.ai, but with all that out of the way, let's dive in.
We kick off today with some OpenAI news. Well, a little bit of speculation and then some real news. The leakers are starting to suggest that the next new model Astro, which was of course the one that did those novel math proofs that we discussed last week, seems to be imminently launching, with some saying that they're even targeting next week. What we know for sure is that even as they are releasing new models, OpenAI is also thinking very much and trying to compete very much on the cost front as well. The company announced that they're giving free users unlimited chats as part of a service overhaul for the GPT-56 model family. The free user tier will now be served with GPT-56 Luna, replacing the instant model range. Free users will also now have a think button to allow for greater reasoning from Luna. Theoretically, this closes some of the experience gap for free users, allowing them to access the same model as paid users, albeit the smaller version. In addition, usage is now unlimited, so free users can use ChatGPT as much as they want. For paid subscribers, GPT-56 Sol will now become the default chat model. OpenAI said that this should improve the experience over GPT-55 instant, with Sol making fewer factual mistakes and avoiding extra detail when it doesn't help.
Finally, Plus and Pro subscribers will now have a new effort slider and thinking mode to provide more intuitive controls over reasoning effort.
While some like jumpers write, how is that even profitable? Kenshi on X says, The move to make OpenAI lunar free is obviously not out of generosity. The free tier is a strategic distribution channel. They're trying to hook people and get them to upgrade to Go or Plus, or of course, make money through ads.
Now, speaking of our discourse of cheaper models, according to the information, Stripe is indeed moving forward with their OpenRouter acquisition. The news outlet reports that Stripe has entered exclusive talks to buy out the model routing startup for close to the $10 billion that was previously reported. Earlier reports had suggested a bidding war with Stripe in the lead, but this suggests that OpenRouter has taken themselves off the market and will enter the negotiation phase with this one specific partner. Certainly, the deals could still fall apart, but exclusive talks do suggest that it's moving to the next level.
Meanwhile, everywhere we are seeing the impact of the supply chain crunch as the world uses more and more compute for more and more AI. The information again reports that Nvidia is considering slashing the specs on Rubin. Currently, Nvidia has three different variants of their next generation of flagship GPU, the Rubin Ultra, under testing. And sources said that some of the test units include less memory than originally announced. Those sources said that Nvidia is considering releasing the lower memory versions, partly due to concerns that they won't be able to secure enough high bandwidth memory for the production run. Now, how big the implications of this are remain to be seen. Even with reduced memory, the chips should still be able to serve inference for the latest generation of ultra-large models like Claude Fabel. However, memory limits could put a cap on the ability to keep scaling model size. Now, at this point, Nvidia has so far denied any issue with sourcing enough memory. In mid-July, Senior VP of Hardware Engineering Andrew Bell said, We were in front of the memory problem, so it's not going to hold us back anytime soon. The pricing, of course, is a problem for the whole world, and probably the pricing will be the bigger challenge. But for supply, we're in shape. Nvidia also wasn't scheduled to ship the new chips until late next year, so there's still time to resolve supply issues. Still, we are at the point where we may be starting to see fundamental hardware limitations potentially start to slow down the pace of model improvement. Making sure investors didn't get it twisted, Mike Sulka wrote, This isn't weak AI demand, this is memory rationing at the top of the food chain.