April 4, 2025 News
Google Sets Premium Pricing for Gemini 2.5 Pro Amid Rising Costs for Top AI Models
Google has announced pricing for its Gemini 2.5 Pro model at $1.25 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, making it Google's most expensive AI offering to date. This pricing, while higher than some competitors like OpenAI's o3-mini, reflects an industry-wide trend of increasing costs for flagship AI models, potentially driven by high demand and significant computing expenses.
Skynet Chance (+0.01%): The increasing costs of top AI models might constrain widespread deployment of the most capable systems, slightly reducing immediate risks, but also indicates these models are becoming more powerful and valuable enough to command premium prices.
Skynet Date (+1 days): Rising costs and computational demands for frontier models suggest economic constraints may slow the pace of development and deployment of the most advanced AI systems, potentially extending the timeline before truly dangerous capabilities emerge.
AGI Progress (+0.04%): The exceptional performance of Gemini 2.5 Pro on reasoning, coding, and math benchmarks represents meaningful progress in key AGI-relevant capabilities, justifying its premium pricing based on significant capability improvements.
AGI Date (+1 days): While the model shows capability advancements, the increasing computational costs and higher pricing suggest economic factors may create a ceiling effect that slightly decelerates the pace of AGI development.
Microsoft Enhances Copilot with Web Browsing, Action Capabilities, and Improved Memory
Microsoft has significantly upgraded its Copilot AI assistant with new capabilities including performing actions on websites, remembering user preferences, analyzing real-time video, and creating podcast-like content summaries. These features, similar to those offered by competitors like OpenAI's Operator and Google's Gemini, allow Copilot to complete tasks such as booking tickets and reservations across partner websites.
Skynet Chance (+0.05%): Copilot's new ability to take autonomous actions on websites, analyze visual information, and maintain persistent memory of user data represents a significant expansion of AI agency that increases potential for unintended consequences in automated systems.
Skynet Date (-2 days): The rapid commercialization of autonomous AI capabilities that can take real-world actions with limited oversight accelerates the timeline for potential AI control issues as these systems become more integrated into daily digital activities.
AGI Progress (+0.08%): The integration of autonomous web actions, multimodal understanding, memory persistence, and environmental awareness represents meaningful progress toward more general AI capabilities that can understand and interact with diverse aspects of the digital world.
AGI Date (-2 days): Microsoft's aggressive push to match and exceed competitor capabilities suggests major tech companies are accelerating AI agent development faster than expected, potentially bringing forward the timeline for systems with AGI-like functionality in specific domains.
OpenAI Shifts Strategy: o3 Launch Reinstated, GPT-5 Delayed by Months
OpenAI has reversed its previous decision to cancel the consumer launch of its o3 reasoning model, now planning to release both o3 and a successor o4-mini in the coming weeks. CEO Sam Altman announced that GPT-5's development is progressing better than expected but integration challenges have pushed its release back by several months, with the company also planning to launch its first open language model since GPT-2.
Skynet Chance (+0.08%): OpenAI's strategy to release multiple powerful models (o3, o4-mini, GPT-5) in quick succession indicates rapid capability advancement that outpaces safety integration, with Altman explicitly mentioning difficulties in smoothly integrating components. This accelerated release pattern under competitive pressure increases risks of deploying insufficiently aligned systems.
Skynet Date (-3 days): The rapid release schedule and apparent acceleration of model capabilities suggests OpenAI is pushing frontier AI development faster than originally planned, likely compressing the timeline for potential control risks. The parallel development of multiple advanced reasoning models signals capabilities are advancing more quickly than anticipated.
AGI Progress (+0.1%): OpenAI's simultaneous development of multiple reasoning models (o3, o4-mini, GPT-5) represents significant progress toward AGI, especially with Altman noting GPT-5 will be "much better than originally thought" and integrate multiple modalities including voice, research, and unified tool use.
AGI Date (-4 days): Despite GPT-5's delay, the overall news indicates an acceleration in the AGI timeline, with multiple advanced reasoning models being released in parallel and OpenAI explicitly stating capabilities are exceeding their expectations. The competitive pressure from DeepSeek and others is clearly driving a faster pace of development.