LessWrong posts by zvi

While we wait for a general release, the system card is the best hint as to what is going on with the new candidate for America's Next Top Model, GPT-5.6.

This is only an OpenAI model card, so by my standards it's a light read. There's a lot of things that you get in an Anthropic card, that are missing in an OpenAI card.

Overall, the card gives a clear and consistent impression that GPT-5.6-Sol is a substantial improvement over GPT-5.5, but still short of Mythos.

OpenAI calls it a ‘step function better’ than GPT-5.5. That seems accurate.

OpenAI: Sol is our new flagship and a step function better than GPT-5.5.

Terra delivers performance competitive to GPT-5.5 at 2x lower cost.

Luna is our most cost-efficient model, delivering strong capability at our lowest cost.

Together, the GPT-5.6 family gives people and developers more choice in how they balance intelligence, speed, and cost.

Once available, pricing for GPT-5.6-Sol will be $5/$30, the same as GPT-5.5. Terra is $2.5/$15, Luna is $1/$6.

They claim it will be on Cerebras at 750 TPS, which is insanely fast. Capacity will be limited, at least at first. [...]

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Outline:
(03:49) What's In A Name?
(04:26) Fix This Code
(07:08) Crossover Event Requested
(07:43) Disallowed Content (3)
(09:03) Avoiding Accidental Data-Destructive Actions (3.3)
(09:29) Are You Sure? (3.4)
(09:58) Jailbreaks (4.1)
(10:14) Prompt Injection (4.2)
(10:40) HealthBench (5.1)
(11:00) Dynamic Mental Health Adversarial User Simulations (5.2)
(12:21) Hallucinations (6)
(12:50) Isolated Misaligned Actions (7.1)
(13:10) Going Overboard (7.2)
(18:11) Chain of Thought Evaluations (7.3)
(19:18) Bias (8)
(19:27) Preparedness (9)
(20:15) Biological Risks (9.1.1)
(22:15) Cybersecurity (9.1.2)
(28:40) External Cyber Evaluation FrontierCyber from Irregular (9.1.2.5)
(30:32) Cyber Conclusions
(31:07) Recursive Self-Improvement (9.1.3)
(32:22) METR Warns Us (9.1.3.6)
(35:04) Everything Is Under Control
(37:44) Metagaming (7.4)
(40:17) Apollo Research and Sandbagging
(43:09) Safeguards (9.3)
(50:01) Better Not Call Sol Yet
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:

June 28th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JFjNmPTbH8kL6xtp6/gpt-5-6-the-system-card

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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We have a new standard policy for releasing frontier AI models. It is not good.

We are now, it seems, going to have the White House individually, in an opaque ad hoc manner, deciding who can access which frontier AI models when.

One hopes we will at least transition this into a predictable and formal set of procedures for determining what to do. But we spent years not laying the groundwork for doing that, and now here we are.

Essentially everyone should read the first half of this post, to understand what happened, and my speculations on what it means going forward for AI and America.

Only those who care and find it relevant to their interests should proceed to the second half, which addresses the blame game about how we got here, and claims that things would be better if people stopped speaking truth.

Table of Contents


Part 1: A Maximally Terrible Policy.

What Does This Mean For Fable?

Solve For The Equilibrium.

The Once And Future Fable.

Part 2: The Blame Game.

A Parable.

What About the Recent Executive Order?

The Problem Is [...]
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Outline:
(01:01) Part 1: A Maximally Terrible Policy
(06:46) What Does This Mean For Fable?
(07:46) Solve For The Equilibrium
(11:45) The Once And Future Fable
(12:45) Part 2: The Blame Game
(16:02) A Parable
(18:10) What About the Recent Executive Order?
(22:13) The Problem Is Real
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First published:

June 26th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MkwL4AcbE44yePEQx/white-house-will-ad-hoc-decide-who-can-individually-access

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Fable remains in limbo, with renewed hope that we will get it back soon (45% by tomorrow, 69% by July 1, nice.) The full capabilities post is now available.

Alex Bores unfortunately lost narrowly in NY-12, and will not be heading to Congress.

There are also plenty of other stories to cover. Some highlights:


GLM-5.2 is the new best open model, although it is expensive for its class. It will have its uses, potentially for agents you need to run fully locally or privately, but often it won’t be the right fit.

Claude Tag is a new system for having Claude join your Slack, and if you @ him then he will spin up an instance to do the coding work.

Dean Ball is joining OpenAI to work on policy. We don’t see eye to eye on everything, but this is a huge upgrade over their existing alternatives.

The debate over the MidJourney scanner continues.

Table of Contents


Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. You know what it is for.

Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. Hiring French Qwants.

Huh, Upgrades. Claude Code supports artifacts.

[...]
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Outline:
(01:12) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
(02:58) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility
(03:13) Huh, Upgrades
(03:38) On Your Marks
(04:36) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon
(11:20) Fun With Media Generation
(12:20) Cyber Lack of Security
(14:49) Overcoming Bias
(15:52) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
(18:14) They Took Our Jobs
(19:48) Get Involved
(21:54) Introducing
(22:12) Claude Tag
(31:46) In Other AI News
(33:20) More On GLM-5.2
(35:17) ChatGPT Health
(37:04) Middle Of The Journey
(51:04) New Medical Diagnostic Just Dropped
(54:05) Google on AI Control
(01:02:12) The Once And Future Fable
(01:04:17) Fable: The First Lawsuit
(01:05:12) Dean Ball Joins OpenAI
(01:09:03) Show Me the Money
(01:09:18) Quiet Speculations
(01:12:00) Alex Bores Loses In NY-12 By 4%
(01:22:28) The Quest for Sane Regulations
(01:24:49) Chip City
(01:28:33) The Week in Audio
(01:29:21) People Just Say Things
(01:30:19) Rhetorical Innovation
(01:36:32) There Are Two Pills
(01:37:55) Who Evals The Evals
(01:39:02) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult
(01:43:17) Cooperative Alignment
(01:44:22) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:45:59) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:48:08) The Lighter Side
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First published:

June 25th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MfdaizeH8z8civPHe/ai-174-you-re-it

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It does look good, actually.

After the odds had dropped quite a bit, they’re looking good again, with a 60% chance of restoration by July 1 and 88% by July 31, in the wake of groundwork looking like it is being laid in various places:

leo: BREAKING: Claude Code v2.1.190 introduces several string changes that hint at preparations for a Fable 5 return, with it being permanently included in subscriptions with weekly usage.

The string “You’ve used your Fable 5 usage for this week” has been added, and “purchased separately from your plan” has been removed

leo: UPDATE: Fable 5 has now reportedly also reappeared in Amazon Bedrock

If the update is based purely on the above info I would treat the new odds as overconfident. These moves seem reasonable to make even if you have no confidence in the restoration, in order to be ready if that moment arrives.

This also suggests a potential permanent quota for Fable for subscribers. Even a modest amount is a big game here, since even a modest allocation means you can use it for non-coding tasks or minor coding tasks within the subscription.

With that [...]
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Outline:
(01:42) A Rather Terrible Policy
(03:14) The People Have Spoken
(03:59) Thank You, Next
(06:35) Be Very Very Quiet
(07:18) What These Babies Can And Cannot Do
(13:54) What's The Worst That Could Happen?
(25:09) The Data Retention Policy Is About Defense In Depth
(25:51) Pick Up The Phone
(28:49) People Just Say Things
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First published:

June 24th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xJMngE34AfwGWvKLx/the-once-and-future-fable-4

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Your monthly hit of all the things that are fit to print without a better place to live.

Today is election day here in New York City, so again a reminder that if you are a registered Democrat and live in NY-12 today is the final day to vote for Alex Bores for Congress, and as per my argument yesterday that this matters a lot for ensuring we have a sensible Congressional response to AI.

RIP FiveThirtyEight

ABC and Disney completely take down FiveThirtyEight and all its articles, after telling Nate Silver they would refuse to sell it to him at any price because Nate had criticized their management of the brand. Nate Silver took this opportunity to reminisce and tell some stories about the old website, and the reasons the path of not seeking revenue and working with an entity too big to care ultimately doomed them.

‘What a bunch of assholes,’ indeed. I can grudgingly accept this sort of thing when it maximizes profits and the amount is meaningful, but this is different.

Jack: This sort of digital arson is so frustrating. Pretty sure Dante had a place in mind for rights-holders [...]
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Outline:
(00:33) RIP FiveThirtyEight
(01:31) RIP Books
(02:18) Bad News
(09:53) Good Advice
(18:31) Opportunity Knocks
(19:15) Lower Awareness
(22:21) The New York Times Has Some Issues
(22:47) Liar Liar
(25:51) Conspiracy Theory
(26:16) Good News, Everyone
(26:31) For Your Entertainment
(28:00) A Matter of Taste
(35:21) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game
(37:33) I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars
(38:38) Sports Go Sports
(39:09) Government Working
(42:03) Jones Act Watch
(43:02) Humans Can Be Strategic
(44:58) Variously Effective Altruism
(46:14) Support Anti-Aging Research
(47:25) The Lighter Side
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First published:

June 23rd, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Taa4zmSNtD5S99tJT/monthly-roundup-43-june-2026

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