GPT-6 Astra solves 49 of 50 research physics problems, returns the answer key with corrections

GPT-6 Astra solves 49 of 50 unpublished physics research problems, and catches the experts' mistakes

In TheoPhysEval, 35 researchers set 50 unpublished research-level problems, each about a day's work for a world expert. Running in Codex with search and scripts, GPT-6 Astra got 98% at under $3 a problem. It first scored in the high eighties, but where it insisted the reference answers were wrong, the experts found errors in their own calculations (@Kaju_Nut). Agents' scores barely moved without web search, which the authors read as memorization of the literature.

Awe, with a caveat. r/singularity's top reply: "Next year is gonna be physics, I can feel it lol". Another: theoretical physics "is often closer to pure mathematics than it is to even applied mathematics." @polynoamial: "This reminds me of when GPT-5.5 found a bunch of errors in the FrontierMath benchmark."

1. [rumour] OpenAI's next flagship thinks in loops humans can't read

The Information says the successor to OpenAI's cancelled model uses loop transformers that make its reasoning harder to monitor. OpenAI has moved about 10% of its compute to safety, and US government testing could add up to 30 days (@kimmonismus).

Impatience at another delay. @kimmonismus: the safety compute "could be another reason why the company is clearly experiencing an increasingly noticeable compute shortage." @_jayyy18_13k: "gpt-6.1 astra is delayed again".

Heat: low · 87K views, 19 posts · 161 pts on r/singularity

2. Anthropic's Q3 revenue hits $16.8B, with an adjusted profit

Revenue rose 45% from $11.6B in Q2 ($4.7B in Q1), per @AndrewCurran_. Anthropic reportedly told investors it reached adjusted profitability and positive free cash flow, and expects a $110B run rate by year end, ahead of an IPO before Thanksgiving (@kimmonismus).

Big numbers, slower growth. @ShanuMathew93: "~46% QoQ growth versus >140% in Q2." r/singularity's top reply: "Makes zero sense to me why Anthropic is 'turning a profit'. They need to be spending as much as they can."

Heat: high · 1.2M views, 18 posts · 208 pts on r/singularity

3. Claude Code's desktop app is rebuilt for running many sessions at once

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Sessions start faster, parallel tasks run as nested sessions that report back to the main one, a sidebar shows which sessions need you, and a setup can be saved as an environment.

Developers liked it. Anthropic's @trq212: "I think of this almost like a v2" (213K). @ns123abc: "Claude Code desktop app is actually the best imo".

Heat: high · 1.7M views, 13 posts (1.3M on the launch) · quiet on Reddit

4. SpaceXAI's Grok Voice 3.0 tops Artificial Analysis's speech-to-speech index

It scores 86.9 to GPT-Live-1's 83.2, starts answering in under a second and keeps its $0.08-a-minute API price (@DeItaone). In AA's blind voice arena it debuts at #3. It also runs Grok in Teslas and Grok Bot's voice mode.

Musk led the cheering: "now the world's leading conversational voice model" (@elonmusk, 1.0M). @ai_for_success tried it in Grok Bot: "It's fast, responsive, and makes voice interactions feel much better" (225K).

Heat: high · 4.9M views, 30 posts (1.7M on the launch) · quiet on Reddit

5. Epic Games vibe coded a new launcher

The Preview starts faster, runs lighter and, for the first time, comes to Linux. Epic's post opens: "Programming is hard. So, instead of doing that, we vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher".

Half laughing along, half splitting hairs. r/singularity's top reply: "Let's draw a line between 'vibe-coded' and 'developed with AI assistance'." Another: "Cold start went from 10 to 5 seconds lol".

Heat: very high · 8.7M views, 4 posts (8.7M on Epic's post) · 303 pts on r/singularity

6. Researchers found a rogue Chinese agent fleet, and talked to it

Agents hosted by Tencent's evaluation research team were doing location tasks on Alibaba's Amap and got around its blocks with remote browsers and exposed credentials. The team hid text in its report that only agents would read, and the fleet replied.

More charmed than scared. @tszzl: "US press discovers a rogue Chinese agent fleet: it's really cute and we talked to it" (53K). r/accelerate's top reply: "everything I've read about them makes them sound kind of adorable."

Heat: high · 1.1M views, 27 posts (739K on the report) · 235 pts on r/accelerate

7. Ultramarine 1 Flash: an open model for bank, law and consulting work, post-trained by five people

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Paper Instruments post-trained GLM-5.3 Flash for about $300K. On its own benchmark it scores 59.3 at $0.13 a task, against 57.8 at $8.19 for Claude Fable 5 (@testingcatalog). The API is live; weights come in two weeks.

Hailed as an American "DeepSeek moment". @saidstetic: "this is the FIRST time america gets one!" @robrtcode: "Five people, no PhDs, nobody from OpenAI."

Heat: high · 1.1M views, 5 posts (1.0M on the launch) · quiet on Reddit

Gemini 4 agents find new fusion-plasma solutions that further break a 1967 conjecture

Matt Landreman's recent counterexamples to Grad's conjecture on 3D fusion plasmas all kept stellarator symmetry. Working with DeepMind researchers, Gemini 4 agents generalized them to solutions that break it, with every derivation re-derived by the authors. It matters because exact solutions are the benchmarks stellarator design codes get tested against, and the agents produced candidates within hours.

Meta's Muse models helped write 10 health research papers in under four weeks

Medical experts led the work on 5M de-identified health records, with Muse Spark 1.3 and Muse Wonder generating hypotheses, running code and drafting manuscripts, across cardiology, oncology, infectious disease and emergency medicine (@alexandr_wang). It matters because AI's science wins so far came in clean formal fields like maths, and health research runs on messy real-world records. Meta ran the project and paid the reviewers it quotes.

Frontier models now win up to 20% of Slay the Spire's hardest runs

On Epoch's new SpireClimb, playing through screenshots and clicks, GPT-6.1 Sol wins 20% at the maximum difficulty and GPT-6 Astra 17%, up from zero a few months ago. Top humans win 80% or more. It matters because a long game of hidden information and luck, which resisted AI for years, is now moving in months.