The New Model Rush
Another week where AI moved faster than anybody can comfortably track.
Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.1 on September 1. Two days later, OpenAI announced GPT-6 Astra, calling it the most intelligent and aligned model in the world. The catch: Astra went out first to a limited set of organizations, with Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users getting it "over the coming days."
To be fair, there's an actual reason behind the staging. Astra is the first model OpenAI has flagged as hitting the Critical threshold for cybersecurity under its own preparedness framework, so early access went to companies in its cyber program. That's not marketing. That's a company being careful with something it thinks is dangerous, and I'd rather they do that than not.
But from the paying-user side, it still creates a strange experience.
When you announce something as being out, people go looking for it. I did. Checked my model picker. Checked the Microsoft Store wondering if the desktop app needed an update. Kept wondering if I was missing something. Then my YouTube feed filled up with creators who'd already had Astra long enough to test it, benchmark it, and cut a full video about it.
I understand the play. Give creators early access, let them run it through its paces, have material ready when the announcement drops. But you end up being shown the new thing everywhere while simultaneously being told you'll get it when you get it. Maybe that builds anticipation. It also builds frustration.
And I'm not sitting around waiting for it. I've got Fable. I've got Opus. I've got GPT-5.6 Sol. I've got other systems for development and creative work. The work keeps moving.
I'm not filling this post with benchmark charts either. Plenty of people already do that, and anyone who wants them can find them. What interests me is what happens after the benchmark. Does it actually help me get something done? Does it understand what I'm asking? Does it stay on task? Does it reduce friction?
That matters a lot more to me than winning a leaderboard for twenty-four hours.
The Hydra Mind
Four Heads Are Better Than One
This past week was unusual for me personally. There was some family stuff going on, so there was testing, uncertainty, and a lot happening away from social media. I pulled back and ended up pushing that nervous energy into something I've gotten interested in again: building things.
I messed around with coding and app development fifteen, twenty years ago. A lot has changed.
Now we've got what people call vibe coding. Instead of writing every line yourself, you describe what you're trying to build, work through the problems with an AI, test what it gives you, correct it, and keep moving.
For the most part, I'm digging it. For the other part, these things can still drive you completely insane. Models make assumptions. They tell you something with total confidence that turns out to be wrong. They fix one thing and decide to "help" with another thing nobody asked them to touch.
So I accidentally built a little Hydra.
One AI works the problem. Another checks its reasoning. Another gives me a second opinion. I make the call. Four heads on the same problem, and it works surprisingly well.
It's also tedious as hell bouncing between windows and carrying pieces of one conversation into another. Now that the main program I've been building has hit a stable point, I've got a small side quest brewing around exactly that problem. I'll talk about it if I actually get it working.
The bigger lesson has been that I'm less interested in AI as an abstract technological argument and more interested in what these tools actually let one person do.
That doesn't mean I think everything around AI is wonderful. I don't. There are real questions about training data, consent, compensation, employment, deception, and people using these systems in ways I'd never support.
But I don't believe the answer is standing on the shoreline screaming at the ocean to go back.
Technology changes things. Photography did it. Before it got cheap, a portrait meant commissioning a painter. The daguerreotype and what came after put portraiture in reach of people who'd never have afforded one. Eventually photography became its own profession and its own art form.
I think we're somewhere inside another one of those uncomfortable transitions. Some jobs change. Some disappear. Others we barely have names for show up. The interesting question isn't whether AI stays. That ship has sailed. The question is what we decide to do with it.
And here's a wrinkle I keep chewing on. Research has found that people rate the exact same image lower once it's labeled AI-made, less skillful, less likely to even count as art. Same picture. Different label. That doesn't settle anything about creativity or authorship, but it does suggest our sense of "soul" and "authenticity" is partly built out of what we believe about the maker before we ever look at the work.
That's worth sitting with.
Nemequr: Drinking Through the Noise
And Then There's the Actual Art
Because after all the models, arguments, coding, automation, ethics, benchmarks, and hype, I still want to make shit.
Lately I've been in another corner of The Ereshkar Continuum, building out a coastal region called Ebidor Bay and developing a podcast project:
Sarrāk: The Thief of Ebidor Bay
At the center of it is Nemequr.
He's an older man, somewhere in that late-forties-to-early-fifties stretch, which lets me put a little more of myself into a character from an age perspective.
Nemequr lived a chaotic life and became renowned as a thief. Eventually he walked away from it, settled down, found something resembling purpose. Then he discovered that most of what he'd come to believe was built on a lie. His faith collapsed. Years passed. His wife died after an illness.
By the time we meet him, the person he used to be has disappeared under decades of bitterness, isolation, and alcohol. Most people around him see an old drunk whose best stories happened a lifetime ago.
Then a young woman crashes into his life.
She grew up surviving on her own. Clever, fast, stubborn, and thoroughly convinced she doesn't need some washed-up old man explaining how the world works. She's also taken something far more important than she realizes.
When the people hunting her finally cross Nemequr's path, he recognizes something tied to the belief system that wrecked his life.
The religion may have been false. But maybe something underneath it wasn't.
And suddenly the old thief has a reason to move again.
The two of them are oil and water. Young and old. Speed and experience. Confidence and hard-earned skepticism. Eventually survival gives them no choice but to lean on each other.
That's about as much as I'm giving away.
The trailer exists. The world is growing. I've been building new environments, experimenting with different visual approaches, and expanding the Continuum while juggling books, music, the website, and whatever side project steals my attention next.
Balance has never been my strong suit. I disappear into one thing for a week or two, surface for air, then disappear into something else. Maybe automation eventually buys me more of the time I actually want to spend: creating.
That's what all these tools are for, at least for me.
My characters are mine. My stories are mine. My worlds come out of my own strange head. AI is one more set of instruments for dragging those things closer to what I see when I close my eyes.
I'm not asking anybody to feel the same way about it. I want to hear the criticism too. I want to know why people are uncomfortable, and understand the problems instead of pretending they aren't there.
Take what helps you grow. Leave what doesn't. Then come back to the roundtable with something new.
That's why you always hear me say my tagline. Evolve With Me. It isn't about putting myself above anybody, or anybody above me. It's about using the tools, and at my age still learning, not planting my feet in one camp and calling it done. Staying open to new experiences, new instruments, and constantly trying to better myself, spiritually, mentally, creatively, in every aspect I can reach.
That's what “The Enigma Axis” is all about.
I'm trying to build this into something that doesn't just showcase my own work, but grows into a community, a place where other people share what they're making and learn from each other. Nobody has to accept anything, and I'm not here to convert anyone to one side of the fence. It's simply a place to share what we know. Then it's on each of us to take what works, leave what doesn't, apply it in our lives and our work, and come back to the table with what we found. Everybody learns. Everybody grows. Not just me. I'm just a creator behind the scenes, building it for all of us.
Evolve with me.
☥𓂀❍︎°𝟕𝟕𝟕°☯︎~YΛПGΣПIGMΛ~☯︎°𝟕𝟕𝟕°❍︎ 𓂀☥
~(Philip Johnson)~
Beyond the Fabric of the Poly-Latentverse: The Prime Fractal Doing His Thang
Sources
AI label bias study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-45202-3
