Gary Marcus: GPT-6 Astra's costly gains don't fix OpenAI's broken economics
GaryMarcus · x · 2026-09-14
Gary Marcus published a critical summary of OpenAI's GPT-6 "Astra":
- Real progress on formally verifiable problems (partly via neurosymbolic techniques), but very expensive and not translating well outside benchmarks; only modest gains on the ECI
- Astra isn't much better than the latest Claude, and the next major model would cost far more for potentially modest gains
- Fierce competition from China, Anthropic, and eventually Amazon and Google is cutting into already negative margins
- OpenAI's agents have huge security problems the company seems unable to solve
His verdict: OpenAI is a master of the press release, but its economics still don't make sense as it builds GPT-7 at even higher cost.
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