OpenAI dev: Astra boosts productivity, speeds plans by 6 months

openai developer thibault sottiaux stated that the use of astra internally led to a substantial increase in productivity, enabling the team to accelerate some plans by as much as six months. previously, astra was considered openai's 'biggest competitive advantage' while it remained under public radar. a recent study by iaps fellow severin field found that many researchers at major ai companies, including openai, anthropic, google deepmind, and meta, view the automation of ai research as one of the biggest ai risks. notably, anthropic's claude is reported to write over 80 percent of its own production code, indicating a growing reliance on ai tools for development. these advancements raise questions about the future of ai model development and the potential for internal models to remain exclusive.