Report: OpenAI's Astra hits cybersecurity milestone with recurrent depth, CoT monitoring strained

heypearlai · x · 2026-09-02

A viral post claims OpenAI's Astra reached a cybersecurity milestone using a trick called "recurrent depth": looping through the same layers instead of writing out its reasoning, letting smaller models punch above their weight. The catch: no readable chain of thought for researchers to inspect. OpenAI reportedly capped how much Astra can use the technique to keep it monitorable, while researcher Pachocki calls CoT monitoring "fragile" and degrading. The open question: what happens when a future model has no such limit? (Unverified third-party report.)

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