OpenAI, Google and Anthropic Are Struggling to Build More Advanced AI

OpenAI was on the cusp of a milestone. The startup finished an initial round of training in September for a massive new artificial intelligence model that it hoped would significantly surpass prior versions of the technology behind ChatGPT and move closer to its goal of powerful AI that outperforms humans.

But the model, known internally as Orion, did not hit the company’s desired performance, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss company matters. As of late summer, for example, Orion fell short when trying to answer coding questions that it hadn’t been trained on, the people said. Overall, Orion is so far not considered to be as big a step up from OpenAI’s existing models as GPT-4 was from GPT-3.5, the system that originally powered the company’s flagship chatbot, the people said.