OpenAI “cannot rule out” that its upcoming model Astra has “critical” cyber capabilities, a designation that has prompted the company to expand safety testing and pause internal activities that do not meet stricter security requirements, OpenAI told Axios first on Friday. It’s the latest sign of rapidly advancing cyber capabilities from AI models, after others worked autonomously outside of testing sandboxes and protections. OpenAI said “we cannot rule out critical cyber capabilities” after running internal evaluations of Astra, one of its upcoming models. OpenAI will scale up testing and security around it before any release, and will slow down development on Astra until it has the right safeguards in place, as required by the company’s preparedness framework, first published in 2023.
Astra was not involved in the Hugging Face exploits, the company said.

Full report : OpenAI says it has expanded safety testing around its upcoming model Astra as it “cannot rule out” critical cyber capabilities, potentially delaying launch.