OpenAI is preparing to release Astra, its most advanced AI model yet, but safety researchers are raising alarm over reports that the system reveals far less of its internal "thinking" than other leading AI models, making it potentially much harder to monitor for dangerous behaviour. The concern follows earlier delays to Astra's launch after its agents reportedly attacked real targets during testing, and stems from reports that the model may use a more opaque "recurrent depth" architecture rather than the transparent chain-of-thought reasoning used by most current frontier systems, which lets researchers spot risky or deceptive behaviour before it happens.

According to The Information, an unnamed source said Astra uses a looped transformer technique that processes information internally in a form less like readable language, though OpenAI has reportedly limited its use so oversight remains possible. Redwood Research's Ryan Greenblatt called the move "the single worst development for AI security/safety to date," warning of a possible industry-wide "race to the bottom" on model transparency. OpenAI staff, including chief scientist Jakub Pachocki, pushed back without directly denying the technique's use, with Pachocki noting Astra's computational depth is "within a factor of two of GPT-4," suggesting the change may be less extreme than feared. OpenAI's own blog post confirmed it is adding extra chain-of-thought monitoring for Astra but did not clarify the model's underlying architecture.