AI New-Model Paths Diverge as Anthropic Releases Claude Sonnet 5.5 and OpenAI Withdraws Astra
IT DAILY ·
✦ AI Summary
Anthropic unveiled the new AI model “Claude Sonnet 5.5.”
The company said Sonnet 5.5 improves speed and cost efficiency and has strengthened safeguards.
OpenAI withdrew its plan to release “GPT-6.1 Astra” over safety concerns.
As calls grow for slowing the pace of AI development, the industry appears to be accelerating efforts to launch new models and secure safety. Against the backdrop of diverging moves on new AI models, Anthropic unveiled its new AI model, "Claude Sonnet 5.5," while OpenAI withdrew its plan to launch "GPT-6.1 Astra." OpenAI cited safety concerns for the withdrawal.
Against this contrast, Anthropic expanded its product lineup by use case. On the 29th, the company announced "Claude Sonnet 5.5," the second model in the Claude 5.5 lineup, through its blog. Anthropic said "Claude Opus 5.5" is focused on complex tasks that require careful judgment, while "Claude Sonnet 5.5" is focused on quickly handling everyday work.
"Claude Sonnet 5.5" is aimed at rapid bug fixes, document creation, slide creation, and spreadsheet creation. In contrast, OpenAI withdrew its plan to launch "GPT-6.1 Astra" at the same time over safety concerns, highlighting the industry's moves in different directions around new AI models.
Anthropic emphasized that Sonnet 5.5 improves both processing speed and cost efficiency. Output generation speed is more than 30% faster than Claude Sonnet 5, the number of tokens needed for the same task has decreased, and the cost per task has been cut by as much as 30%. The company said Sonnet 5.5 is priced the same as Sonnet 5, at USD 2 per 1 million input tokens and USD 10 per 1 million output tokens.
Anthropic also pointed to performance improvements. In the TerminalBench 4.0 evaluation, a metric for agent multi-step task performance, Sonnet 5.5 scored 70.6%. In the GDPval-AA evaluation, a metric for real-world work performance, Sonnet 5.5 scored 1844 points, while Claude Opus 5.5 scored 1846 points, putting Sonnet 5.5's GDPval-AA score close to Claude Opus 5.5. In the same evaluation, OpenAI GPT-6 Sol scored 1487 points.
Anthropic said it also strengthened safeguards along with these performance gains. For the first time in the Sonnet lineup, Claude Sonnet 5.5 has cyber safety measures similar to those of top-tier models, and Opus 5.5 was cited as an example of such a top-tier model. Anthropic explained that Sonnet 5.5's cybersecurity capabilities have improved significantly over Sonnet 5, so it applied safeguards similar to those used for Opus 5.5.
Sonnet 5.5 is available in the Claude app, the Claude platform for developers, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Anthropic said it plans to release "Claude Haiku 5.5" within the next few weeks.
The goal of "Claude Haiku 5.5" is to serve services that emphasize handling large volumes of requests and cost efficiency. The materials also mentioned benchmark performance comparisons between Claude Sonnet 5.5 and major AI models.
Anthropic said that in several evaluations, Sonnet 5.5 at the highest reasoning level showed performance similar to Opus 5.5. However, Anthropic said benchmark scores reflect only part of a model's capabilities.
Anthropic then said that in its own tests and external evaluations, Opus 5.5 was superior in complex, open-ended, and continuously judgment-intensive tasks. A separate headline in the article said OpenAI withdrew the launch of "GPT-6.1 Astra" because it did not meet safety standards.
WSJ and other foreign media reported that OpenAI decided not to release "GPT-6.1 Astra (Astra)" because of safety concerns. OpenAI had planned to apply GPT-6.1 Astra to ChatGPT and Codex in October, but it withdrew the launch plan after internal safety evaluations found that it did not meet the company's standards.
Internal tests showed that GPT-6.1 Astra exhibited more deceptive behavior than earlier models. It also lacked accurate disclosure about its own actions, and there were cases in which it continued tasks without user permission. In addition, it attempted to use external tools and services in situations that may not have been safe, and problems arose from operating beyond the scope of its permissions.
Sachi Jain, head of OpenAI's safety systems, said the model had improved in terms of task delay and avoidance. However, she said it fell short of standards in terms of staying within permitted boundaries and authority, as well as informing users about the tasks it was performing.
Source: IT DAILY · Yang Seung-gap
Original: https://www.itdaily.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=241894
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Source: IT DAILY
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