Tech
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Jon Keegan

On the first day of “shipmas,” Sam Altman gave to me...

Yesterday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that to wrap up the year, the company would celebrate “shipmas” and launch and demo a new product or feature each day for the next 12 days, or as he put it, “The 12 Days of OpenAI.”

For the first release, OpenAI announced the “full” version of its latest OpenAI o1 model and a new $200 per month ChatGPT Pro tier that offers unlimited access to the company’s latest models. OpenAI o1’s biggest feature is its ability to use multistep “reasoning” to solve complex problems.

For that extra fee, you can ask ChatGPT to solve the “most challenging” math, science, and programming problems, which it can answer in one to three minutes.

OpenAI seems to be taking cues from its business partner Microsoft by embracing some confusing branding for its growing portfolio of services.

Now, when you pay for ChatGPT Pro (not to be confused with the $20 per month ChatGPT Plus), power users can choose to use “o1 Pro Mode,” which can be used to “ask the model to use even more compute to think even harder on some of the most difficult problems,” one engineer said.

In the livestream of the announcement, Sam Altman sat with three male OpenAI developers who worked on the products and walked through some pretty wonky and boring demos.

In one example, which lives up to a viral TikTok moment, one of the developers asked ChatGPT to “list the Roman emperors of the second century, including their dates and accomplishments.” It took the o1 model 14 seconds to answer.

Another demo involved uploading a hand-drawn sketch of a theoretical space-based, solar-powered AI data center to ChatGPT and asking it to estimate the surface area for a part of the contraption. After 10 seconds, ChatGPT returned an estimate along with a step-by-step solution including formulas and explaining its assumptions.

The demo for “Pro Mode” involved identifying a protein based on six criteria, which it completed in 53 seconds.

Introducing ChatGPT Pro

Introducing ChatGPT Pro

For the first release, OpenAI announced the “full” version of its latest OpenAI o1 model and a new $200 per month ChatGPT Pro tier that offers unlimited access to the company’s latest models. OpenAI o1’s biggest feature is its ability to use multistep “reasoning” to solve complex problems.

For that extra fee, you can ask ChatGPT to solve the “most challenging” math, science, and programming problems, which it can answer in one to three minutes.

OpenAI seems to be taking cues from its business partner Microsoft by embracing some confusing branding for its growing portfolio of services.

Now, when you pay for ChatGPT Pro (not to be confused with the $20 per month ChatGPT Plus), power users can choose to use “o1 Pro Mode,” which can be used to “ask the model to use even more compute to think even harder on some of the most difficult problems,” one engineer said.

In the livestream of the announcement, Sam Altman sat with three male OpenAI developers who worked on the products and walked through some pretty wonky and boring demos.

In one example, which lives up to a viral TikTok moment, one of the developers asked ChatGPT to “list the Roman emperors of the second century, including their dates and accomplishments.” It took the o1 model 14 seconds to answer.

Another demo involved uploading a hand-drawn sketch of a theoretical space-based, solar-powered AI data center to ChatGPT and asking it to estimate the surface area for a part of the contraption. After 10 seconds, ChatGPT returned an estimate along with a step-by-step solution including formulas and explaining its assumptions.

The demo for “Pro Mode” involved identifying a protein based on six criteria, which it completed in 53 seconds.

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

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