In response to pressure from rivals including Chinese AI company DeepSeek, OpenAI is changing the way its newest AI model, o3-mini, communicates its step-by-step “thought” process.
On Thursday, OpenAI announced that free and paid users of ChatGPT, the company’s AI-powered chatbot platform, will see an updated “chain of thought” that shows more of the model’s “reasoning” steps and how it arrived at answers to questions. Subscribers to premium ChatGPT plans who use o3-mini in the “high reasoning” configuration will also see this updated readout, according to OpenAI.
“We’re introducing an updated [chain of thought] for o3-mini designed to make it easier for people to understand how the model thinks,” an OpenAI spokesperson told TechCruch via email. “With this update, you will be able to follow the model’s reasoning, giving you more clarity and confidence in its responses.”
Reasoning models like o3-mini thoroughly fact-check themselves before giving out results, which helps them avoid some of the pitfalls that normally trip up models. The trade-off is that reasoning models take a little longer to arrive at solutions — typically seconds to minutes longer.
DeepSeek’s R1 model, a “reasoning” model along the lines of o3-mini, reveals its full thought process, which many AI researchers argue is the preferred approach. In addition to making the model easier to study, the reasoning steps deliver a better user experience in certain situations, helping indicate when the model might be on the right — or wrong — track.
OpenAI had opted not to show the full reasoning steps for o3-mini and its predecessors, o1 and o1-mini, in part due to competitive reasons. Instead, users only saw summaries of the reasoning steps — summaries that were at times erroneous.
When we briefed people on
Source: techcrunch.com