OpenAI today announced an improved version of its most capable artificial intelligence model to date (one that takes more time to think through questions), just one day after Google announced the first model of its type.
OpenAI’s new model is called o3 and replaces o1, which the company introduced in September. Similar to o1, the new model spends time thinking through problems to provide better answers to questions that require step-by-step logical reasoning. (OpenAI chose to abbreviate the designation “o2” because it is already the name of a UK mobile phone company.)
“We see this as the beginning of the next phase of AI,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a livestream Friday. “These models can then be used to perform increasingly complex tasks that require a lot of inference.”
According to OpenAI, the o3 model scores much higher than previous models on several measures, including those measuring complex coding-related skills and advanced math and science abilities. ARC-AGI is a benchmark designed to test the ability of AI models to reason about the most difficult mathematical and logical problems encountered for the first time.
Google is also conducting similar research. In a post about X yesterday, Google researcher Noam Shazeer revealed that the company has developed its own inference model called Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. Google CEO Sundar Pichai called it “the most thoughtful model yet” in a post of his own. Google’s new model achieved a high score on SWE-Bench, a test that measures a model’s agential capabilities.
However, OpenAI’s new o3 model is 20% better than o1. “o3 blew it out of the water,” says Ofir Press, a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University who helped develop SWE-Bench. “It’s a very surprising increase, but we don’t know how it happened.”
The two head-to-head models show that the competition between OpenAI and Google is fiercer than ever. It is important for OpenAI to demonstrate that it can continue to make progress in order to attract more investment and build a profitable business. Meanwhile, Google is desperate to show that it remains at the forefront of AI research.
The new model also shows that AI companies are increasingly looking beyond just scaling up AI models to squeeze better intelligence out of them.
