OpenAI Shows ‘Strawberry’ AI to the Feds and Uses It to Develop ‘Orion’ — The Information 8/27/24, 6:42 AM

AI Agenda

OpenAI Shows ‘Strawberry’ AI to the Feds

and Uses It to Develop ‘Orion’

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photos via Getty/Shutterstock.

By Stephanie Palazzolo

Aug 27, 2024, 7:00am PDT

In case you were wondering why Sam Altman cryptically posted a picture
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OpenAI Shows ‘Strawberry’ AI to the Feds and Uses It to Develop ‘Orion’ — The Information 8/27/24, 6:42 AM

In case you were wondering why Sam Altman cryptically posted a picture
of strawberries earlier this month, the answer almost certainly has to do
with Strawberry, a mysterious technical breakthrough that could help
OpenAI’s models complete complex tasks such as math problems that
conversational AI has traditionally struggled with. (If this sounds familiar,
it’s likely because Strawberry was previously called Q*.)

Why is Altman being so cheeky? Probably because the word is out. In mid-
July, Reuters reported on the existence of Strawberry, and this morning, we
published this piece with even more details.

Plus this summer, his team demonstrated the technology to American

national security officials, said a person with direct knowledge of those
meetings, which haven’t previously been reported.

By demonstrating an unreleased technology to government officials,

OpenAI could be setting a new standard for AI developers, especially as
advanced AI increasingly becomes a national security concern. The
demonstration could be part of OpenAI’s push to be more transparent with
policymakers who could cause the company problems if they feel
threatened by its technology.

Being more transparent with government officials is especially important

given the departure of several safety leaders earlier this year, some of
whom claimed Altman didn’t care as much about safeguarding the tech as
they did.

The demonstrations also likely have another purpose: starting a

conversation with officials about how the company can secure the
technology so that foreign adversaries like China can’t steal it—and maybe
also take a shot at Meta Platforms for releasing open-weight AI that China
and everyone else can access. (Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says it’s
inevitable that China will get it, one way or the other.)

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OpenAI Shows ‘Strawberry’ AI to the Feds and Uses It to Develop ‘Orion’ — The Information 8/27/24, 6:42 AM

In any case, you should expect the SFO-Dulles plane route to get more
patronage from AI developers in the coming year and beyond.

Why Strawberry Matters to ‘Orion’

One of the most important applications of Strawberry is to generate high-

quality training data for Orion, OpenAI’s next flagship large language
model that’s in development. The code name hasn’t previously been
reported. (Side note: Can anyone explain to us why OpenAI, Google and
Amazon have been using Greek mythology to name their models?)

Using Strawberry could help Orion reduce the number of hallucinations, or

errors, it produces, researchers tell me. That’s because AI models learn
from their training data, so the more correct examples of complex
reasoning they see, the better.

But there’s also a push within OpenAI to simplify and shrink Strawberry
through a process called distillation, so it can be used in a chat-based
product before Orion is released. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given
the intensifying competition among the top AI developers.

We’re not sure what a Strawberry-based product might look like, but we
can make an educated guess.

One obvious idea would be incorporating Strawberry’s improved reasoning

capabilities into ChatGPT. However, though these answers would likely be
more accurate, they also might be slower.

That means that Strawberry might be ill-suited for applications where users
expect immediate responses, like OpenAI’s SearchGPT search engine, but
ideal for less time-sensitive use cases, like fixing noncritical coding errors in
GitHub.

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OpenAI Shows ‘Strawberry’ AI to the Feds and Uses It to Develop ‘Orion’ — The Information 8/27/24, 6:42 AM

You could imagine a not-so-distant future where ChatGPT users are able to
toggle Strawberry on and off depending on how time sensitive their
requests are.

Here’s what else is going on…

Deals and Debuts

See The Information’s Generative AI Database for an exclusive list of private

companies and their investors.

Butlr, which develops AI and thermal technology sensors, raised $38

million in Series B funding from Pacific Alliance Venture, GS Futures,
DNX Ventures, Ray Stata, Joi Ito, Carrier and Qualcomm.

Supio, a legaltech AI startup for personal injury lawyers, raised $25 million
in funding led by Sapphire Ventures.

Viggle, an AI video model developer, raised a $19 million Series A led by

Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Two Small Fish.

Moveo.AI, which builds AI agents for customer support use cases, raised
€2.3 million in seed funding led by Eleven Ventures, with participation
from Uni.Fund and Charge.vc.

Katara, an AI agent startup, raised a $2.2 million seed funding round co-led
by Diagram Ventures and Sparkle Ventures, with participation from
StreamingFast and other angels.

New From Our Reporters

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OpenAI Shows ‘Strawberry’ AI to the Feds and Uses It to Develop ‘Orion’ — The Information 8/27/24, 6:42 AM

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Stephanie Palazzolo is a reporter at The Information covering artificial

intelligence. She previously worked at Insider and Morgan Stanley. Based in New
York, she can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at
@steph_palazzolo.

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