OpenAI has effectively canceled the release of o3, which was slated to be the company’s next major AI model, in favor of what CEO Sam Altman is calling a “simplified” product offering. In a post on X on Wednesday, Altman said that in the coming months, OpenAI will release a model called GPT-5 that “integrates […]
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Tech giants have been trying to find a way to put a computer on your head — and then have people buy that computer — for years. So far, it hasn't really caught on.
Now, Mark Zuckerberg says, we're going to find out if people are really going to buy these things in meaningful numbers — or if the industry is going to have to wait even longer for the future to arrive.
"This will be a defining year that determines if we're on a path towards many hundreds of millions, and eventually billions of AI glasses, and glasses being the next computing platform, like we've been talking about for some time — or if this is just going to be a longer grind," the Meta CEO said during his company's earnings call Wednesday.
Zuckerberg has seen some promising signs that he might have figured it out. Sales of Meta's Ray-Ban augmented reality glasses, while modest compared to mainstream tech products, have been a pleasant surprise for the company — Zuckerberg called them a "real hit" on the company's call.
And last fall, Meta showed off an impressive demo version of its Orion headset, a much more powerful computer that looks like oversized glasses; the company hopes to have one that's ready for consumers to buy in the next few years.
On the other hand: Revenue for Meta's Reality Labs unit, which sells the Ray Bans along with its more cumbersome Quest goggles, remained essentially flat over the last year. Sales of $1.08 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024 were up a mere 1.1% compared to the previous year.
So, it doesn't look like there's been a meaningful surge of people buying any of the devices Meta has been selling. In the meantime, Reality Labs — which also includes the company's once-hyped metaverse projects — has lost more than $60 billion over five years.
What's going to change about this year? Zuckerberg didn't get into details, except that he thinks AI will make the glasses much more compelling for many more people.
And if it doesn't happen this year, it's going happen … eventually, he insists.
"There are a lot of people in the world who have glasses," he said on Wednesday's call. "It's kind of hard for me to imagine that a decade or more from now, all the glasses aren't going to basically be AI glasses, as well as a lot of people who don't wear glasses today finding that to be a useful thing."
On Friday, during Day 12 of its "12 days of OpenAI," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced its latest AI "reasoning" models, o3 and o3-mini, which build upon the o1 models launched earlier this year. The company is not releasing them yet but will make these models available for public safety testing and research access today.
The models use what OpenAI calls "private chain of thought," where the model pauses to examine its internal dialog and plan ahead before responding, which you might call "simulated reasoning" (SR)—a form of AI that goes beyond basic large language models (LLMs).
The company named the model family "o3" instead of "o2" to avoid potential trademark conflicts with British telecom provider O2, according to The Information. During Friday's livestream, Altman acknowledged his company's naming foibles, saying, "In the grand tradition of OpenAI being really, truly bad at names, it'll be called o3."
© Benj Edwards / Andriy Onufriyenko via Getty Images
Within hours of NASA announcing its decision to fly the Artemis II mission aboard an Orion spacecraft with an unmodified heat shield, critics assailed the space agency, saying it had made the wrong decision.
"Expediency won over safety and good materials science and engineering. Sad day for NASA," Ed Pope, an expert in advanced materials and heat shields, wrote on LinkedIn.
There is a lot riding on NASA's decision, as the Artemis II mission involves four astronauts and the space agency's first crewed mission into deep space in more than 50 years.
© NASA/Amanda Stevenson
Two years ago next week, NASA's Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean to wrap up what, at first glance, seemed to be a highly successful unpiloted test flight that made a return to the Moon feel within reach.
The Orion capsule descended under parachutes, right on target near a US Navy recovery ship on December 11, 2022. In 25-and-a-half days, the Orion spacecraft entered the Moon's sphere of influence, flew within about 60 miles (100 kilometers) of the lunar surface, and, for the most part, worked as designed in deep space. On top of that, the rocket's launch vehicle, NASA's heavy-lift Space Launch System, also performed near-flawlessly on its first flight, known as Artemis I.
However, once NASA engineers got a closer look at the Orion spacecraft, their optimism faded. They saw cracks in the craft's heat shield and divots in the ablative thermal protection layer resembling potholes on a neglected street. This isn't what engineers expected, and they spent the next two years investigating the cause of the problem and determining whether it posed a safety risk for NASA's next Artemis mission, Artemis II. If the results weren't favorable, NASA might have to disassemble the Orion spacecraft, pushing back the flight a year or more beyond the Artemis II mission's already-delayed launch date.
© NASA
The Space Launch System rocket that will dispatch four astronauts on the first Moon mission in more than 50 years passed a major milestone Wednesday.
NASA said ground teams inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida lifted the aft assembly of the rocket's left booster onto the mobile launch platform. Using an overhead crane, teams hoisted the left aft booster assembly—already filled with pre-packed solid propellant—from the VAB transfer aisle, over a catwalk dozens of stories high and then down onto mounting posts on the mobile launcher.
This marks the start of stacking for the second SLS rocket earmarked to launch NASA's Artemis II mission and slated to send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day flight around the far side of the Moon. Artemis II will be the first crewed flight of NASA's Artemis program and the first time people fly on the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft.
