OpenAI applied research lead: 80-90% of research already on GPT-7 and GPT-8
Boris Power says GPT-6 Astra is a short-term investment to be distilled into smaller models like Luna, and that the biggest problem is users not knowing what AI can already do.
🚨OpenAI’s Head of Applied Research says 80–90% of the company’s research is already focused on GPT-7, GPT-8 and beyond. Boris Power says improvements within a single model generation are viewed internally as extremely short-term investments: useful for learning faster today, but not the long-term strategy. The playbook is basically: build the giant frontier model → use it as the teacher → distill it into tiny, cheap models. Power says GPT-6 Astra can be distilled into models like Luna, arguing the best way to build a small specialized model may be to first train a much more capable general one. And he says model performance isn’t even the biggest problem right now. Most users still don’t know what today’s AI can already do.