GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex

(twitter.com)

93 points | by mfiguiere 2 hours ago

14 comments

  • andai 1 hour ago
    For context:

    > Additionally, we’re introducing a new ultra mode that goes beyond the capabilities of a single agent by leveraging subagents to accelerate complex work.

    https://openai.com/index/previewing-gpt-5-6-sol/

    Can someone explain how this compares with Pro? I thought Pro was already something similar.

    • changoplatanero 1 hour ago
      For pro mode the agents worked independently and only when they all finished did a new agent take a look at everything to merge the work into a single response. The new thing involves subagents that have been trained to cooperatively pursue a task and are allowed to communicate with each other along the way.
      • dools 58 minutes ago
        I tried a pro model out the other day and thought there must have been a bug in Pi’s cost calculations. But no, it’s absolutely fucking insane. Wasn’t even any better at the task.
        • bombcar 50 minutes ago
          I really suspect that the models are basically the same below, it’s all in the prompt. The way I use them, surgically, they seem to perform about the same. Fable certainly hasn’t blow my socks off.
          • giancarlostoro 0 minutes ago
            > Fable certainly hasn’t blow my socks off.

            Same. I suspect they'll get better at taking in terrible prompts over time though... Maybe that's what Fable does better, reminds me of Sora 2, it would take my crappy prompt and expound upon it. I told it once to generate a video of someone working at some company that changed its name, but the old name had historic relevance, it referred to the new company name without me telling it to, by virtue of me wanting a video of TODAY with a 90s icon.

      • thomasahle 50 minutes ago
        Do you have a source for this, or just rumors?

        The responses I get from pro don't feel like ensembles. They are often very one directional.

        • changoplatanero 26 minutes ago
          This can be because the summary model just picked the output from one of the sub agents.
        • wahnfrieden 14 minutes ago
          They made it up. It's not true so there's no source.

          They might be confused by MoE but that doesn't work like how they describe and all GPT 5 models use MoE not just Pro. Or they're confused by how thinking summarization works but again that's all GPT models.

          It's bullshit. But downvote this away, sure.

    • ludamad 1 hour ago
      I imagine this is something like Anthropic's dynamic workflows where a JS file is created to make a little AI harness on the spot
  • postalcoder 1 hour ago
    I wonder if it's related that that OpenAI has found a way to cut inference costs by half, according to The Information.

    https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/ai-agenda/openai-...

    • layla5alive 45 minutes ago
      https://archive.ph/NEwVz

      "However, these inference optimizations, which rival Anthropic refers to as “compute multipliers,” are a big focus for all the labs. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been publicly talking about the concept since at least mid-2023, when he said on a podcast that the company limits “the number of people who are aware of a given compute multiplier” because it could give other AI labs a leg up if they were to be able to replicate them. (Compute multipliers can also refer to efficiency optimizations in the model-training phase.)"

      Yes, on a world with finite resources where your industry is singlehandedly siphoning ALL THE RESOURCES - hoard general efficiency optimizations and treat them as trade secrets - winning is all that matters, normal people and other species and the planet be damned.

      Everything I hear about Dario these days makes me like him less and less. He sure did seem to speed run the 'tech leader with scruples' to 'tech villain' path! I guess all the cycles are compressing as we approach the singularity..

      • razodactyl 18 minutes ago
        Not sure I know where I fall regarding your point: Yes to trade secrets, but also science and AI should be for the good of all.

        OpenAI seems to be trading roles back with Anthropic becoming misanthropic. I hope they both start heading in the direction of how the AI field was prior to LLMs.

        Collaboration and benefit for all should always be the primary motivator.

      • anon373839 15 minutes ago
        He never was a leader with scruples and Anthropic has never been about anything other than grabbing power at all costs.
      • bigyabai 7 minutes ago
        > He sure did seem to speed run the 'tech leader with scruples' to 'tech villain' path!

        What kind of rosy-eyed chump believes in the "tech leader with scruples" bullshit? It always lies.

        Did some people just ignore Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook's sociopathy, somehow? Did anyone buy into their "privacy is a human right" nonsense?

    • drivebyhooting 1 hour ago
      What’s the technique? And did they buy it from thinking machines?
      • turtleyacht 1 hour ago
        Maybe cache similar answers from others. Surprised if this is not already being done.
        • wahnfrieden 1 hour ago
          Like google search, this does not work because of how common long tail use is.

          What you think could be a big chunk, is more likely to be a fraction of a percent of queries.

          And what use is similar query caching - so you (very often! if actually cost effective, maybe half the time) get a response to a query that was different from yours. Including for when you have a lot of context input already. You’re going to get trash.

          If it were constrained to only very common initial prompts, and somehow the long tail did not actually dominate as it does with Google search (can't find the reference at the moment but it was a famous article some years ago), it also wouldn't account for serious enough cost savings. Long context is what is expensive.

          This might only work in constrained domains like customer service where there’s tolerance for generic answers. For technical work?

          • turtleyacht 1 hour ago
            Please pardon the pure speculation incoming. Yes, caching the answer doesn't seem useful. Caching the progression, the graph, may be. This is similar to making code changes with ed(1) instead of editing in vi.

            The transform script(s) are cached and can be played back or adjusted. Surely for some breadth of question inputs, they map more often to similar answers--but not static answers; instead, evented edits.

            It's nearly untenable for a human to keep private edit scripts to generate code changes. The extra steps for custom regex, essentially one-offs for a shared codebase, is inefficient. But maybe not to an LLM.

            • wahnfrieden 34 minutes ago
              I don't understand how this fits LLM architecture at all
          • joegibbs 34 minutes ago
            But there must be a ton of generic questions that people ask. Stuff like "What's the capital of country X?" - it's probably at least 10% of queries. Memories, custom instructions etc would invalidate them, but if you can return the answers basically free it's probably worth it.
          • dools 57 minutes ago
            I would be very surprised if they hadn’t sorted out some form of shared KV caching
    • minimaxir 33 minutes ago
      Semi-related, has anyone noticed their GPT 5.5 usage in Codex being cut in half as of a couple days ago? I got a lot more mileage out of my session usage yesterday for the same workload.
  • throw394042 40 minutes ago
    I'm working in large US corporation. And I see that I already have access to 5.6-Sol Ultra on my corporate account.

    I haven't really used it yet.

    2 months ago management was showing us scoreboards, praising leaders who used most tokens. Last few weeks, we're getting weekly emails, telling us that whenever we can - we should use cheaper models, and that we should watch the page which shows our tokens usage.

  • martin_drapeau 31 minutes ago
    Recently, I've been so eager to get new model releases in Codex. I'm hooked. I hope this accelerates development. Shows how dependant I have become to Codex.
  • timcobb 43 minutes ago
    when will it be available? do we know? I don't have X, not sure if the thread mentions it.
  • asn0 56 minutes ago
  • jvdsf 18 minutes ago
    Who cares
  • lawgimenez 1 hour ago
    No Twitter, what’s he responding to?
  • ChrisArchitect 1 hour ago
    Related:

    Previewing GPT‑5.6 Sol: a next-generation model

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48689028

  • jquery 1 hour ago
    Will individual subscribers have access?
    • AussieWog93 1 hour ago
      I would assume yes - their goal is to capture consumer subscribers. Claude are going to take Fable away, and they're going to swoop in and give it to us.
      • kirubakaran 56 minutes ago
        This is why I don't think Fable will be taken away. Not for long anyway.
        • ashraymalhotra 40 minutes ago
          I love how competition is great for customers!
  • behnamoh 1 hour ago
    I still don't know why OpenAI doesn't put gpt-5.5-pro in Codex. It's one hell of a model and easily parallels Fable/Mythos. Sure, it'll use up your quota much faster but that's the price some users are willing to pay for absolutely high quality responses.

    I think gpt-5.5-pro runs 12x parallel gpt-5.5 agents behind the scene and uses OpenAI's secret sauce to synthesize their answers into one insanely good response.

    • shusaku 11 minutes ago
      I recently have been testing ChatGPT business at work and the quota seems to disappear almost instantly even using weaker models. Unless they dramatically increase their quotas it’ll be unusable.
    • aetherspawn 52 minutes ago
      Is it as good as Fable..? Fable is the first model that mostly writes without the AI slop format for me, and so I can comfortably actually copy and paste most of what it spits out.

      OpenAI models have always been the worst in my experience for verbose, slop formatted responses, with each generation increasing in sloppiness.

      • behnamoh 42 minutes ago
        > Fable is the first model that mostly writes without the AI slop format for me

        I'm not that impressed by Fable's writing to be honest, still has the AI giveaways like em dash.

        • hn_user2 33 minutes ago
          Humans use em dash as well.

          I hate that I have had to remove it from my writing style because people assume it’s AI generated. But I think that ship has sailed. I’ll have to do without now.

          • breezybottom 21 minutes ago
            Parentheses usually read better anyway.
        • dionian 31 minutes ago
          i cant reply to hn_user2, but i have the same experience, i find myself never using emdash where i would have before
  • brcmthrowaway 1 hour ago
    Gamechanger..
  • jvdsf 18 minutes ago
    who cares
  • villgax 13 minutes ago
    All these names mean squat