While this isn't great for users it seems like a pretty standard circling of the wagons in preparation for the next phase in the battle for frontier AI dominance.
Ironically, as a Cursor and Claude subscriber, but not an OpenAI subscriber, this will push me back to Anthropic. I don't feel good about giving OpenAI money directly, but I've found switching to GPT 5.6 Sol now and again in Cursor to be useful. Now I'll probably just forget about OpenAI models.
I think they are betting that Astra will be impossible to ignore.
I'd need to have a problem I couldn't solve with current models for my eyes to wander.
What if it’s cheaper too?
Yeah I haven’t had a problem yet which was too difficult for Fable to solve. I do have problems which Sol does not do well on. But if I could get Fable-level intelligence faster/cheaper and less restricted, that’s all I need.
Fable is great minus it's annoying writing style. It's nowhere near as bad as Opus 5 but it's very "AI trope-y" even with heavy steering. I can spot the writing immediately.
Yeah not sure why everyone thinks they need a PhD lvl assitant to build their slop SaaS when an open source model that is 100x cheaper, and 3x faster and arguably still "PhD" level assitant could also build their slop SaaS.
For three months, until the next SOTA model drops. And with each improved model, the number of people who actually need it declines.
Exactly. Astra will likely get its Mythos moment, and then another Chinese lab releases its equivalent three months later while Anthropic releases a newer, better model.
There's a reason why most businesses don't hire PhDs, they dont need it. PhDs are cheap in many countries, arguably more affordable than a full time mythos lvl agent, yet businesses in India still don't hire 30k a year PhDs to run their businesses. Its simply not necessary. AI labs have lost the plot from a business perspective. If chasing ASI is the goal, that also seems stupid.. Putting all of your customers out of business with ASI doesn't really lead to great outcomes either.
They're commodity fetishism maxxing.
It’s OpenAI (and Anthropic I’m sure) realising that they’ve somehow ended up stuck in the lowest margin part of the stack (providing inference), and trying to get out of it
Why would you possibly allow companies to push you? You are the customer and you should control which models you use.
Because one is better or worse? What else do you think they meant?
OP said:
> as a Cursor and Claude subscriber, but not an OpenAI subscriber, this will push me back to Anthropic
Instead of deciding based on the merits of the model, they are being pushed by the actions of the companies. You should be able to use the best model, or whatever model you like, independently of what any company thinks or does.