OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra today, a model that OpenAI President Greg Brockman says may be remembered as the arrival of artificial general intelligence, or humanlike capability.
Why it matters: Astra pushes AI agents closer to doing complex professional work on their own — while raising questions about how safely they can be deployed, Axios’ Ina Fried reports.Driving the news: During a briefing today, Brockman told reporters he believes OpenAI has reached AGI, while leaving users to decide whether Astra meets that definition.
As to whether Astra could mark the arrival of AGI, he said: “I think it might be about this model.
“He ended the briefing by saying: “Welcome to the AGI era.”
Catch up quick:Astra is the first model OpenAI has designated as reaching its “critical” cybersecurity threshold under its preparedness framework.
That meansthe model can potentially find and exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities across well-protected systems without step-by-step human guidance.
It remains to be seen just how well Astra can take on highly advanced tasks in the real world without making errors or raising fresh safety concerns.
OpenAI acknowledged that Astra was harder to monitor in evaluations designed to test whether it could evade oversight.Go deeper … Get Axios AI+.Disclosure: Axios and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI to access part of Axios’ story archives while helping fund the launch of Axios into four local cities and providing some AI tools. Axios has editorial independence.
New research reveals a shocking truth about sleep deprivation: prolonged lack of sleep can cause the brain to literally start consuming itself. When the body is severely sleep-deprived, brain cells enter a state of stress and trigger a process called autophagy, where neurons break down their own components to survive. While autophagy is normal in moderation, excessive activation caused by sleep loss can lead to cognitive decline, memory problems, and reduced brain function over time.
Sleep is essential not just for rest, but for the brain’s maintenance and repair.During deep sleep, the brain clears toxins, strengthens neural connections, and restores overall function. Skipping sleep interrupts these critical processes, putting your brain health at serious risk.
This research highlights that chronic sleep deprivation is more than feeling tired—it can have long-term effects on mental performance, memory, and overall brain structure. Prioritising 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep nightly isn’t a luxury; it’s vital for maintaining your cognitive health and protecting your brain from long-term damage.
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Around the world, the demand for cleaner alternatives to petroleum-based jet fuel is rising.
By 2030, the European Union will require a minimum sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) blend of 6 percent, which will rise to 70 percent by 2050. Countries like the United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan, and Brazil are instituting similar policies, putting pressure on players in the global energy trade to ease reliance on crude oil.
SAF can come from all kinds of recycled waste byproducts like plant material, animal fat, and used cooking oil — the latter of which has already become a major source for existing SAF supplies. Unfortunately, the flow of extra spent fry oil is already slowing to a trickle as refiners swoop in to secure the gloop.
That’s where Chinese company Niutech comes in. In a new press release, first spotted by Interesting Engineering, Niutech announced a massive contract with an anonymous “global energy major” to build out an “industrial continuous waste plastic pyrolysis production line” capable of churning out 10,000 to 50,000 tons of plastic-derived SAF each year.
That might seem like a lot to unpack, but it’s really pretty simple. Basically, the Chinese firm is announcing the development of a massive supply line that turns plastic garbage into usable jet fuel. It plans to do so using a thermal decomposition process called pyrolysis, in which plastic waste is heated to extraordinary temperatures in an oxygen-free environment.
Though it isn’t new, pyrolysis remains something of a niche for the industrial-grade plastics-recycling space. For this approach to meet the growing need for SAF, it first has to graduate beyond the realm of small eco-startups into a widely-accepted industry standard — which appears to be Niutech’s goal.
Unlike previous SAF initiatives involving plastics, this particular production line will all be under one roof, cutting down on the need for costly shipping and handling. The Niutech refinery is also said to make use of a smorgasbord of plastics like polyethylene, nylon, polypropylene, and ABS, all “without complex pre-treatment such as washing, sorting or drying” — streamlining the complex process of sorting plastic and converting it to refinable oil at this kind of scale.
Should Niutech and its anonymous industry partner succeed in bringing the system online, it would undoubtedly serve as a constant source of plastics-based SAF for the global aviation industry, and as a role model for other refineries to follow.
“Large-scale pyrolysis projects impose stringent requirements on continuous operational capability,” a Niutech spokesperson said in the company’s press release. “Niutech has focused on pyrolysis technology for nearly 40 years and brings mature equipment and extensive project experience. This partnership is another validation of the strength of our industrial continuous technology.”
Roughly half of American adults say they spend too much time on their phones — and more than half of younger adults are trying to kick the habit, according to Pew Research Center data out this week.
Why it matters: Over the past two decades, smartphones have come to dominate daily life. Now Americans — especially younger adults — are pushing back against how much of their time and attention they command.
For adults, there’s a growing market of products, apps and physical spaces designed to keep us off our devices.
By the numbers: 53% of U.S. adults say they’re on their phones too much. That share jumps to 70% when looking just at 18- to 29-year-olds.
45% of all adults say they’ve tried to cut back on phone time in the last year. When considering just those under 50, the share is 58%.
The other side: People want time back from their phones, but they do acknowledge some perks of the devices, Pew found.73% say smartphones help keep them informed, and 51% say they help them stay connected to others.Go deeper: Our tips for digital detox.
US President Donald Trump on Thursday received Hasidic rebbes and ultra-Orthodox leaders at the White House ahead of Rosh Hashanah. The meeting in the Oval Office was described as the first of its kind in more than 50 years, The Jerusalem Post reports.
Meeting participants
According to the publication’s preliminary information, those invited included leaders of the Satmar, Skver, Bobov and Vizhnitz Hasidic dynasties, as well as Rabbi Malkiel Kotler, head of the Beth Medrash Govoha yeshiva in Lakewood, New Jersey. Also named were both Satmar rebbes — Rabbis Aaron Teitelbaum and Zalman Leib Teitelbaum — the Skverer Rebbe, the Bobover Rebbe and the Vizhnitzer Rebbe of Monsey.
According to Belaaz, White House liaison to the Jewish community Martin Marx personally called the invitees and spent several months organizing the meeting. The outlet also reported that each rebbe was to speak separately with Trump for about two minutes, after which a joint roundtable could take place.
More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.
Military conscription issue
The Jerusalem Post notes that likely topics of discussion included issues important to the ultra-Orthodox community, in particular the conscription of Haredim into the Israel Defense Forces. A source for the newspaper had previously claimed that participants in the gathering sought to influence Trump and Israeli officials, seeking support for exempting yeshiva students from military service.
According to this source, the Grand Rebbe of Satmar, Aaron Teitelbaum, also hoped to persuade Trump to link US support for Israel to exempting yeshiva students from conscription. During a speech at a Satmar yeshiva in Kiryas Joel, he said that he initially wanted to decline the invitation but decided to appeal to the president because of the situation of tens of thousands of Jews in Israel who, he said, are affected by the conscription of yeshiva students.
The invitation of Satmar leaders drew criticism from some Trump supporters who back Israel because of the Satmar movement’s anti-Zionist views. The outlet describes both Satmar rebbes, the Skverer Rebbe and Rabbi Kotler as anti-Zionists, while characterizing the Vizhnitzer Rebbe as non-Zionist and the Bobover Rebbe as non-Zionist without a hostile attitude.
The current and former presidents of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) governing body have said that efforts to isolate the institution diplomatically are aimed at eroding confidence in the international legal order, as US President Donald Trump’s administration has pressured countries to isolate the ICC.
“Efforts to isolate the Court diplomatically – whether by encouraging States Parties to withdraw from the Rome Statute or urging non-States Parties to join measures intended to weaken it – are aimed at eroding not only one institution, but confidence in the international legal order itself,” Paivi Kaukoranta, the current president of the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties, and seven former presidents said in a joint op-ed published on Thursday.
In the piece that appeared on the Just Security law and policy journal’s website, they argued that the ICC represented a collective decision by sovereign states to create rules for prosecuting genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The court, they stressed, is not intended to replace national justice systems.
“The ICC is a court of last resort,” the authors wrote.
They also rejected the argument that the court necessarily undermines state sovereignty, saying that countries joining international treaties and institutions are exercising sovereignty rather than surrendering it.
The statement comes as the Trump administration sanctioned ICC judges and officials and pressured countries to distance themselves from the court.
The US, which is not a member of the ICC, has strongly opposed its cases involving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and past investigations involving US personnel.
But the current and former assembly presidents framed the dispute more broadly, warning against a world in which political power determines when international law applies.
“The choice before us is between a world based on the rule of law and one where might decides what is right,” they wrote.
They called on the ICC’s 125 member states, international and regional organisations and other supporters of international law to provide the court with political, legal and practical backing and to help governments resist pressure to weaken it. “Now is the time to strengthen the institutions that uphold international law, not dismantle them.”
Washington has sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, over what Secretary of State Marco Rubio described as efforts to prompt ICC action against Israeli officials.
The Trump administration has alsoended US participation in the UN Human Rights Council, halted funding to UNRWA and withdrawn from UNESCO and the World Health Organization.
In January, Trump ordered the US to leave dozens more international and UN bodies, including UN Women, the UN Population Fund and the UN climate convention, saying they conflicted with US interests and sovereignty.
Technological progress has taken more than its fair share of the workload from humans over the years. Washing machines clean our clothes, tractors plough the fields and computers sort out the admin.
Meanwhile, economic growth and redistribution of wealth means most workers in industrialised countries do not need to spend most of their waking hours on gainful employment. The 12 hour working day that was common during the 19th century has been largely reduced.
So will developments in AI help us gain even more free time?
Not necessarily. In fact, AI might actually cause working hours to increase.
One reason for this has to do with the effects of AI on people’s bargaining power in the workplace. If workers are fearful that their jobs might be lost to automation, research shows they may be inclined to increase their efforts as a way of signalling to employers that their labour is still valuable.
My research on the rat race suggests that this kind of response is to be expected.
Employers must continuously decide whom to hire, promote or dismiss. In making such decisions, employers seek to reward productivity. But productivity is often hard to measure, so employers rely on alternatives metrics such as the amount of time spent working.
Checking whether a work station is still occupied after everyone else has gone home is much easier than assessing the accuracy of a complex project. And from a worker’s point of view, increasing the time they spend at work seems like an effective way of setting themselves apart from other (apparently less motivated) workers.
But when everyone pursues this strategy, it becomes self-defeating. No one gains a positional advantage, while everyone works more.
The introduction of AI to workplaces can turbocharge this dynamic. Existing AI tools have already automated some tasks, like data entry, creating an expectation that entire roles will be redundant soon.
Against this backdrop, the rat race becomes more cut throat. Workers reasonably expect large scale restructurings of their companies and seek to make sure that they will retain their jobs in the process.Researchers recently found evidence for this, noting that workers in AI exposed industries like financial services and IT are literally switching off their office lights later than those in less exposed industries.
Another problem is that employers can overestimate the extent to which AI boosts workers’ productivity. The availability of AI tools to improve efficiency creates an expectation among employers that workers can do more than they could before in the same amount of time. However, when these expectations are overblown, they can lead to additional work intensification or longer work hours.
Working nine ‘til…?
Finally, the adoption of AI causes significant frictions. Established routines are overhauled, existing roles change and new roles are created. Workers must be trained in the use of AI tools and must learn to work alongside them.
But what makes this particularly challenging is that existing AI tools are continuously being improved and new tools developed at a rapid pace. All of this places additional demands on workers’ time.
It may be sobering to contemplate that AI might not improve our lives by relieving us from toil. Overwork and burnout might even increase over the coming years.
But that situation is by no means inevitable or unavoidable – especially if future control over AI’s design and implementation is not left to employers and large AI firms.
It is possible in theory to design and implement AI in ways that improve workers’ skills, enhancing their areas of expertise, making their work more valuable and thereby enhancing their bargaining power with employers. An empowered workforce would be able to bargain for favourable working conditions, including working time patterns that fit with people’s lives and preferences.
And if developers were to prioritise augmentation and empowerment, AI could be the ultimate tool that helps to tackle widespread resentment and disenchantment with our working lives.
It was sad but strangely fitting that Dolly Parton should have died during the UK’s National Year of Reading, given the way the much-loved country singer used her wealth and influence to promote reading.
Parton’s Imagination Library has provided hundreds of millions of books to pre-school children around the world since 1995. While books are of course important, my work as a reading and language academicmakes clear this must be complemented with robust reading instruction and support that is sustained through childhood and adolescence for those who need it.
The singer was well aware that she was judged by her appearance, and used this to her advantage. Behind her almost cartoonish “cover” was an incredibly smart woman who used her profile to address the things she cared about: community, poverty, education and reading.
For her Tennessee community, she built the Dollywood theme park in 1986 to bring employment, the Dollywood Foundation in 1988 to promote education, and the Imagination Library in 1995 to give children access to books.
The Imagination Library gifts a book a month to children from birth to five years.What started in Dolly’s home state in the US has extended to Canada, the UK, Australia and Ireland. In any area where there is an active programme partner, parents and carers simply sign up and the rest is taken care of.
In 2025, the programme celebrated its 30th anniversary and hit a milestone of distributing more than 300 million books to children. In the UK, Imagination Library books have found their way into many homes across the four home nations. In her research, Caroline Zwierzchowska-Dod at Swansea University revealed the impact of the programme, including increased shared reading, improved early childhood literacy and boosting school readiness.
Motivation and engagement
Parton created the Imagination Library in tribute to her father, who was held back in life by illiteracy. The singer’s response was to provide access to books, resonating with other initiatives around the world, like the UK’s BookTrust Bookstart programme.
But motivation and engagement is about more than just access to books. In the Nuffield Foundation’s Love to Read project, access was just one of six identified research-informed principles to promote reading motivation and engagement.
Also important are: choice of reading materials; having the time to read; connection and personal resonance; social interaction around books; and the success needed to identify as a reader. Alongside reading materials, we must ensure that children can access printed formats, whether they are reading to one another, or for themselves.
In terms of human evolution, reading is a recent invention, employing parts of the brain that have evolved to support spoken language and vision. But unlike spoken language, reading must be actively taught, and effective early instruction is crucial.
The UK national curriculum mandates systematic synthetic phonics, where children are taught the sounds that link to letters, alongside a rich language and reading environment. Despite high-quality reading instruction, a substantial minority of children have reading needs, with 20-25% failing to meet UK government standards at ages six and 11.
The research I undertook with colleagues Laura Shapiro, Sanne van der Kleij and Adrian Burgess demonstrates reading needs are also prevalent in the teenage years, especially for youngsters from more disadvantaged backgrounds. We have translated our work into two continuing professional development programmes that enable secondary school leaders and teachers to support reading in their pupils.
Both will and skill are important.If both are in place, then young readers can enter a virtuous circle of reading more, getting better at reading, reading more, and so on. Importantly though, our research shows that skill must come first if we want our young people to enter this virtuous circle.
Dolly Parton presenting her one millionth Imagination Library book – and first braille book – to a child in Liverpool in 2014. PA / Alamy
Early experiences, sustained practice
Dolly’s Imagination Library gifts books to all children from babies up to the age of five. Providing access to books from birth helps to establish early shared reading habits.
Researchindicates that shared reading of “first word” books is directly linked to infant word learning, and that regular reading routines promote infant interest and parent confidence.
The goals of the Imagination Library and our findings resonate with the importance of early efforts to promote reading. However, early intervention can never be enough. Academics and teachers must sustain the efforts to identify, support and monitor reading progress throughout childhood and adolescence, for at least two reasons.
First, the demands of reading change as children develop.Initially, language comprehension is crucial as children listen to stories. Then, as children learn to read, knowledge of the sounds of their language (phonology) and how they map them onto letters (orthography) comes into play.
As children build their word-reading skills, reading fluency and reading comprehension, a complex array of knowledge and skills becomes important – including vocabulary, comprehension skills and background knowledge of the text. Thus, the barriers to successful reading change.
This means we can’t assume a child who can successfully engage in shared reading experiences will be successful when they learn to read. Reading difficulties or needs can emerge at any point, as the challenge of reading shifts. So, identification and monitoring is an ongoing process.
Second, even if we have robust approaches for identifying reading needs in the early stages of reading, these needs may well be pervasive over time. While early intervention is crucial, we must monitor progress carefully and intervention must be sustained where it is needed.
Dolly Parton may no longer be with us, but her generous Imagination Library has put millions of books into the hands of children all over the world. It has helped foster not just a love of reading, but good reading habits that can set children up for life.
Jessie RIckettsProfessor of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London
Disclosure statement
Jessie RIcketts has received funding from the ESRC, Nuffield Foundation, Leverhulme Trust and Department for Education to support her research activities.
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The most frequent question we’re asked as arts editors: “Have you seen anything good lately?”
Our newsletter is the answer. We all lead busy lives, with countless things demanding our attention: work, chores, childcare. Free time is precious. But with so many options for what to watch and read at the end of day, listen to on our commute, or visit in town, we don’t want to waste it sifting through them all. Something Good cuts through the noise, with a carefully curated selection of the latest film, TV, book, video game and music releases, as well as live events and exhibitions – straight to your inbox, every fortnight, on Friday afternoons. And unlike other roundups, our selection is chosen by academic experts.
When FG came to power in 2011, the strength of the Irish Defence Forces was 9,650 personnel. Its now 7,767. In 2011, the Irish Navy had 8 operational ships patrolling our seas. Its now less than 4. FG is the biggest threat to Irish security.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Catch up quick: Astra is the first model OpenAI has designated as reaching its “critical” cybersecurity threshold under its preparedness framework.
It remains to be seen just how well Astra can take on highly advanced tasks in the real world without making errors or raising fresh safety concerns.
The big picture: Excessive smartphone use among kids and adults has come under growing scrutiny, with studies linking it to problems ranging from “
The other side: People want time back from their phones, but they do acknowledge some perks of the devices, Pew found.73% say smartphones help keep them informed, and 51% say they help them stay connected to others.Go deeper: 
