LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“o3 Will Use Its Tools For You” by Zvi


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OpenAI has finally introduced us to the full o3 along with o4-mini.
Greg Brockman (OpenAI): Just released o3 and o4-mini! These models feel incredibly smart.
We’ve heard from top scientists that they produce useful novel ideas.
Excited to see their positive impact on people's daily lives and humanity's hardest problems!
Sam Altman: we expect to release o3-pro to the pro tier in a few weeks
By all accounts, this upgrade is a big deal. They are giving us a modestly more intelligent model, but more importantly giving it better access to tools and ability to discern when to use them, to help get more practical value out of it. The tool use, and the ability to string it together and persist, is where o3 shines.
The highest praise I can give o3 is that this was by far the most a model has been used as part of writing its [...]

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Outline:

(01:56) What's In a Name

(02:51) My Current Model Use Heuristics

(04:21) Huh, Upgrades

(05:31) Use All the Tools

(09:47) Search the Web

(10:27) On Your Marks

(18:15) The System Prompt

(19:00) The o3 and o4-mini System Card

(23:17) Tests o3 Aced

(25:14) Hallucinations

(31:41) Instruction Hierarchy

(32:52) Image Refusals

(33:18) METR Evaluations for Task Duration and Misalignment

(42:45) Apollo Evaluations for Scheming and Deception

(44:40) We Are Insufficiently Worried About These Alignment Failures

(47:16) GPT-4.1 Also Has Some Issues

(50:08) Pattern Lab Evaluations for Cybersecurity

(51:45) Preparedness Framework Tests

(52:14) Biological and Chemical Risks (4.2)

(58:20) Cybersecurity (4.3)

(59:27) AI Self-Improvement (4.4)

(01:00:51) Perpetual Shilling

(01:01:54) High Praise

(01:09:31) Syncopathy

(01:11:58) Mundane Utility Versus Capability Watch

(01:16:33) o3 Offers Mundane Utility

(01:24:10) o3 Doesn't Offer Mundane Utility

(01:30:54) o4-mini Also Exists

(01:31:31) Colin Fraser Dumb Model Watch

(01:32:52) o3 as Forecaster

(01:34:31) Is This AGI?

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First published:

April 18th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/u58AyZziQRAcbhTxd/o3-will-use-its-tools-for-you

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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