The move was announced on X by OpenAI's product leader, Thibault (Tibo) Sottiaux, who leads core products like Codex and ChatGPT at the AI lab. He said that the Pro plan puts the most strain on its systems, which is why sign-ups for this service tier are now being disabled. 'We wanted to take the smallest step that allows us to continue giving the broadest access possible,' Sottiaux wrote. He added that the company's other plans, including the API and lower-cost Go and Plus plans, remain available. The company warned on Wednesday that such a change might come. At the time, Sottiaux wrote, 'Demand for Astra is really unprecedented. We're pulling all the levers possible to sustain the demand, but I've not seen anything like it until now and we went through very steep growth before. Priority will always be to keep excellent service for existing users, but we might have to pause new Pro subscriptions for a bit if this continues.' Launched on September 3, Astra has been rolling out across OpenAI's plans, including Pro, Plus, Enterprise, and Business accounts, in addition to its AI. The model promises a major leap forward in areas like AI reasoning, coding, and computer use ' all areas of steep competition. OpenAI even heralded Astra as the beginning of the 'AGI era,' and a generational leap, stoking demand even more....

This summer, the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing welcomed faculty from colleges and universities across Greater Boston, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Texas to campus for the inaugural AI Educators Pilot, a weeklong workshop aimed at expanding how artificial intelligence is taught across disciplines and learning environments. Inspired by MIT class C01/C51 (Modeling with Machine Learning), a course developed through the Common Ground for computing and AI education that focuses on helping students understand and apply foundational AI and machine learning concepts to problem-solving in their own disciplines, the workshop gave educators an opportunity to explore how its materials and teaching methods could be adapted for their classrooms. 'The broader goal is to expand AI education to more students by investing in training for instructors,' says Dan Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)....

During the day, waste products such as lactic acid and worn-out proteins build up in the brain. When we sleep at night, waves of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) help to wash away this waste, keeping the brain healthy. In a new study, MIT researchers have shown that they can strengthen these CSF waves through exposure to short bursts of a gentle, staticky sound known as 'pink noise' during sleep. These bursts increase the amplitude of slow electrical waves in the brain, which then enlarges the CSF waves. The researchers now hope to explore whether this enhanced CSF flow could help to boost cognitive function, improve memory, or even slow the progression of neurodegenerative diseases caused by the buildup of harmful proteins such as amyloid beta. 'We found that we were able to increase the size of the CSF flow wave during sleep, which as far as we know, there hasn't been a method to do before. Now that we can enhance CSF flow during sleep in healthy adults, we're really excited to bring this technology to clinical populations to see what effects we can have,' says Laura Lewis, the Athinoula A. Martinos Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a member of MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and the Research Laboratory of Electronics, and an associate member of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory....

For the first time, a truly major open problem in mathematics has been solved by computer, according to OpenAI, which says it has cracked one of the 'Millennium Problems' related to the motion of fluids. The artificial-intelligence (AI) company in San Francisco, California, announced on 8 September that it has generated a solution to the most commonly used physical model of fluids ' the Navier-Stokes equations ' showing that they can break down. Whether or not this could happen was one of the seven 'Millennium Problems' asked by the Clay Mathematics Institute at the turn of the twenty-first century. Solutions come with a prize of US$1 million. 'It is certainly an exciting day, as we contemplate the announcement of major advances in the human understanding of mathematics,' says mathematician Martin Bridson, president of the Clay Mathematics Institute. 'Our proof does show that there exist fluids which start out perfectly normal, and under the Navier-Stokes equations, actually achieve infinite speed in a finite amount of time,' said OpenAI computer scientist Ven Chandrasekaran in a press briefing. Because this behaviour is physically impossible for a real fluid ' such as a liquid or a gas ' it suggests that under certain circumstances, the equations may not be a reliable mirror of physical reality, Chandrasekaran said....