On Thursday, OpenAI released “o1,” a new AI model that can reason through hard problems by breaking them down to their component parts and handling them step by step. Released in two iterations, o1-preview and o1-mini, the model is available to all ChatGPT Plus users, with a broader release to follow.
The o1 release is the first of OpenAI’s “Strawberry” AI reasoning project (originally called Q*), which the company believes is a major step forward for the field. “We think this is actually the critical breakthrough,” OpenAI research director Bob McGrew told The Verge this week. “Fundamentally, this is a new modality for models in order to be able to solve the really hard problems that it takes in order to progress towards human-like levels of intelligence.”