# GPT-6 Astra gives mathematicians a breather, and OpenAI says that's by design

> Source: <https://the-decoder.com/gpt-6-astra-gives-mathematicians-a-breather-and-openai-says-thats-by-design/>
> Published: 2026-09-10 13:45:32+00:00

OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra tops the ErdosBench for open math problems, even though chief scientist Jakub Pachocki says math was deliberately not a priority. Instead, OpenAI is pouring resources into recursive self-improvement and alignment research. That supports the theory of an increasingly "spiky" AI development path, with extreme strength in select domains rather than broad progress, at least as long as AI can't improve itself and still needs targeted optimization with human-generated data.

The article [GPT-6 Astra gives mathematicians a breather, and OpenAI says that's by design](https://the-decoder.com/gpt-6-astra-gives-mathematicians-a-breather-and-openai-says-thats-by-design/) appeared first on [The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com).