“GPT-5.6: The System Card” by Zvi

While we wait for a general release, the system card is the best hint as to what is going on with the new candidate for America's Next Top Model, GPT-5.6. This is only an OpenAI model card, so by my standards it's a light read. There's a lot of things that you get in an Anthropic card, that are missing in an OpenAI card. Overall, the card gives a clear and consistent impression that GPT-5.6-Sol is a substantial improvement over GPT-5.5, but still short of Mythos. OpenAI calls it a ‘step function better’ than GPT-5.5. That seems accurate. OpenAI: Sol is our new flagship and a step function better than GPT-5.5. Terra delivers performance competitive to GPT-5.5 at 2x lower cost. Luna is our most cost-efficient model, delivering strong capability at our lowest cost. Together, the GPT-5.6 family gives people and developers more choice in how they balance intelligence, speed, and cost. Once available, pricing for GPT-5.6-Sol will be $5/$30, the same as GPT-5.5. Terra is $2.5/$15, Luna is $1/$6. They claim it will be on Cerebras at 750 TPS, which is insanely fast. Capacity will be limited, at least at first. [...] ---Outline:(03:49) What's In A Name?(04:26) Fix This Code(07:08) Crossover Event Requested(07:43) Disallowed Content (3)(09:03) Avoiding Accidental Data-Destructive Actions (3.3)(09:29) Are You Sure? (3.4)(09:58) Jailbreaks (4.1)(10:14) Prompt Injection (4.2)(10:40) HealthBench (5.1)(11:00) Dynamic Mental Health Adversarial User Simulations (5.2)(12:21) Hallucinations (6)(12:50) Isolated Misaligned Actions (7.1)(13:10) Going Overboard (7.2)(18:11) Chain of Thought Evaluations (7.3)(19:18) Bias (8)(19:27) Preparedness (9)(20:15) Biological Risks (9.1.1)(22:15) Cybersecurity (9.1.2)(28:40) External Cyber Evaluation FrontierCyber from Irregular (9.1.2.5)(30:32) Cyber Conclusions(31:07) Recursive Self-Improvement (9.1.3)(32:22) METR Warns Us (9.1.3.6)(35:04) Everything Is Under Control(37:44) Metagaming (7.4)(40:17) Apollo Research and Sandbagging(43:09) Safeguards (9.3)(50:01) Better Not Call Sol Yet The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 28th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JFjNmPTbH8kL6xtp6/gpt-5-6-the-system-card --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.