GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex • Hacker News Board

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex

#231

Post by solenoid0937 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:48 AM UTC

reinitctxoffset wrote: post #172

satvikpendem wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US can just ban Chinese weights being used in US companies.

If the Trump administration decides to annoint Altman and Amodei in defiance of market forces it will rapidly discover that it no longer has the sovereign bond auction pricing power to prop them up. This isn't 1998: the Treasury has taken five major body blows in the last 25 years, the world's energy markets, maritime insurance regimes, electronic payments rails, and moral authority in places like the UN Security Cou…

It is in OpenAI, Anthropic, and the US Gov's best interest to slow China down and ban Chinese models. Literally none of what you wrote prevents them from doing so.

Once China starts to get scary, Commerce will export control GPUs and declare Chinese models "foreign munitions." Any nation doing business with the US will not be allowed to use these models either, and that will be the end of that.

It is just not in the US's interests to fund China in the race to AGI.

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex

#232

Post by barrkel » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:51 AM UTC

Topfi wrote: post #210

barrkel wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are stochastic. You build reliable processes out of unreliable parts with feedback and self-correcting mechanisms. AI is not actually magically special in this regard. It has higher variance and we're still figuring out how to get all the tradeoffs right.

Please. If you told a customer support rep that you are the former US president [0], they would not hand over the account straight away because you asked nicely. These models are great tools, but putting them and people on the same level does a disservice to our species and also is simply incorrect to what we know these models to be and their capabilities/limitations. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/j…

I didn't put them on the same level.

At the same time, one should acknowledge that not all tasks are on the same level.

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex

#233

Post by alfiedotwtf » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:53 AM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #190

tmountain wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The craziest for me is companies that sticking stochastic agents into automated business processes and expecting stable/reliable outcomes. Businesses want deterministic processes in the vast majority of cases.

I'm struggling with the assertion that these models cannot provide reasonably deterministic guarantees. I am using gpt to populate JSON objects conforming to a list of natural language constraints for purposes of generating fake customers. I am finding that gpt5+ never fucks up. Not even a little bit. I've ran this test hundreds of times with 20+ constraints and it's been perfect every time. Stable information yields…

> I'm struggling with the assertion that these models cannot provide reasonably deterministic guarantees.

LLMs are probabilistic by design so running the same prompt multiple times will give you different results.

Otherwise, we wouldn’t needed LLMs and could replace it all with Postgres

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex

#234

Post by Implicated » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:54 AM UTC

smcleod wrote: post #229

Szpadel wrote: post #199

there seems to be very big misunderstanding about what the "ultra" is, so let me explain it basing on the codex source code: it's similar to Claude code ultracode. there is no ultra effort level implemented on the backend. it's just alias in the codex to max effort setting and single line addition to prompt to use subagents proactively. that's all as far as we know pro models work differently. for once those are back…

ultracode in Claude Code kicks off a dynamic workflow.

It's similar in that it also pins you at xhigh effort _combined_ with the workflows (which one might say isn't far off from proactive use of agents)

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex

#235

Post by drw85 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:54 AM UTC

make3 wrote: post #183

jvuygbbkuurx wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is priced at expecting AGI levels of breakthroughs. Just a very useful tool for programming is definitely not enough to keep the music playing.

the thing went from the transformer paper in 2017 to basically doing your job for you in 2026

The problem is that it's too expensive. It can technically do parts of my job for me, but at a variable cost that's higher than mine right now.

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex

#236

Post by jayzer01 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:55 AM UTC

Are people excited about the capabilities of 5.6 over competing LLMs?

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex

#237

Post by LUmBULtERA » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

zaptrem wrote: post #205

satvikpendem wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not because they want to but because they literally don't have the capacity to.

Why haven’t we seen any queues or the like over the past week then? If it’s truly a capacity limitation why not just boot subscription users to a lower priority queue or limit usage to outside peak hours?

There could be a whole host of reasons. It may be during launch that compute is re-allocated from training to inference so that all users can try Fable. Soon that compute will re-allocate back to training until they can get more compute.

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex

#238

Post by alfiedotwtf » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #171

wjnc wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in Finance and learned pretty quickly that to point out the implicit future cost raises based on the cost the LLM-providers need to recoup was unpopular at best (STFU better describes the situation). Running full force into a bear trap.

I've seen that mentality and gone to bat to convince a boardroom that it's the wrong approach, when people were star-struck by the possibilities. Luckily I'm in a position as CTO of a (very non-tech, brick and mortar) company that entrusts me to manage their budget for new features, and prevent erosion of our software/logistics over the long term. And I've come down decidedly on the side of not having LLMs fuck with…

You know… up until your comment I’ve never even considered there are companies right now outsourcing overseas to people who will just vibecode it for a quick buck, my those companies live in interesting times

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex

#239

Post by alfiedotwtf » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:07 AM UTC

someguyiguess wrote: post #213

noduerme wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than the delay time, I'm not sure I see the difference. You're removing your primary from the job of writing code, putting them into an editorial role, which removes responsibility and agency and actual hands-on understanding. The quality of the code is beside the point. More friction (language barriers, time zone difference) is actually better if you want to maintain institutional knowledge, because it require…

I reject the premise that using LLMs absolutely leads to loss of institutional knowledge. It is trivial for an LLM to generate a knowledge base of any kind in any language which can answer any question about your institution at any time. How is a bunch of fragmented humans with limited knowledge who can’t all communicate with each other better than that?

I guess that all depends on how much your company revolves around Minecraft

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra will be in Codex

#240

Post by alfiedotwtf » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:10 AM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #217

someguyiguess wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reject the premise that using LLMs absolutely leads to loss of institutional knowledge. It is trivial for an LLM to generate a knowledge base of any kind in any language which can answer any question about your institution at any time. How is a bunch of fragmented humans with limited knowledge who can’t all communicate with each other better than that?

If you're not being sarcastic, you answered your own question. LLMs can absolutely do whatever you tell them to, which rapidly leads to the creation of a dependency if you begin building upon that as an assumption. I've, for better or for worse, jumped full-on in with LLMs, and I can already feel my abilities radically declining over time. That's fine by me, but if you're a company looking to protect your institution…

I can imagine boardrooms everywhere asking LLMs what’s the most successful way to make money, and overnight every company pivots to gambling, tobacco, and porn.