OpenAI's Astra model went for a drive and no one died
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model became the first large language model to successfully complete a driving course in a parking lot, navigating 134.7 meters in over five minutes. The experiment, part of the DrivingBench project, revealed that other commercial AI models failed to complete the task due to perception errors. While the test demonstrated technical feasibility, it highlighted significant cost inefficiencies and safety-related refusals by the AI system.
- ▪GPT-6 Astra completed a 134.7-meter course in a parking lot in 5 minutes and 22 seconds, outperforming other models like GPT-5.6 Sol and Claude Fable 5.1.
- ▪The inference cost for the drive was $7.74, which is approximately 500 times more expensive per mile than using gasoline for a standard vehicle.
- ▪Researchers had to use deceptive prompts to prevent the AI model from refusing to drive the car due to safety concerns.
- ▪The setup required a $999 driver assistance device running openpilot software and a constant internet connection to function.
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| Original publisher | The Register |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/09/24/openais-astra-model-went-for-a-drive-and-no-one-died/5298715 |
| Publication time | Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:54:18 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-24T03:10:12.549Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-24T03:10:12.549Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | IMev3bkFOsfv · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); ai and ml OpenAI's Astra model went for a drive and no one died First LLM to pass test did it in a parking lot at snail's pace, at considerable expense, but it still counts for something Thomas Claburn Thomas Claburn AI AND SOFTWARE REPORTER Published thu 24 Sep 2026 // 01:54 UTC READ MORE OpenAI agents ‘infiltrated Australian government website’ 2 hours ago Mop the slop from your LinkedIn feed with a new open-source Chrome extension 6 hours ago Frontier AI keeps racing despite calls to…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Register.
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