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points by bitpush 1 day ago | 0 comments

How is this any different than terra, sol etc or leopard, yosemite etc, or model x, y, 3, s ..

Don't know about the leopard and model x, but at least in the case of OpenAI luna > Terra > Sol > Astra is a pretty obvious size progression.

But I come from a latin language background, so maybe I'm a bit biased there.

[–] VTimofeenko 1 day ago

At the risk of taking a geocentric position, my gut feel is Terra -> Luna -> Sol -> Astra. Sorting algorithm is distance from observer.

Size wise Astra is not categorically bigger than Sol, both in absolute terms and the observed size.

[–] Mogzol 1 day ago

Astra is latin for "stars", so basically the Galaxy (or Universe as a whole) which is categorically bigger than Sol, the sun, a single star.

The naming makes perfect sense to me, the sorting algorithm is size, both for the names and for the models themselves. Smaller things represent smaller models, and vice versa.

[–] VTimofeenko 1 day ago

> the Galaxy (or Universe as a whole) which is categorically bigger than Sol, the sun, a single star.

I would need to be a complete moron to argue with this. Humor me, however. My Latin skills end at remembering "Romani Ite Domum" and English is not my first language.

My layman reading of the names: there is one Terra, one Luna and one Sol => "Astra" is singular.

Now that I googled it, I understand that "Astra" literally means the "Stars" category. I would not have thought that they called a single star "Astrum". On the other hand, I am not sure if it means "Galaxy" in modern sense, but we're entering Roman Astronomy territory, where I am even less knowledgeable than in the language.

Sol is a star, so having a dedicated Stars category on the naming scale makes less sense. Treating Astra as Stars set without Sol, the "distance from observer" argument still kind of makes sense.

[–] warkdarrior 1 day ago

> My layman reading of the names: there is one Terra, one Luna and one Sol => "Astra" is singular.

That is incorrect. "Astra" is Latin for "stars" (plural). The singular would be "astrum".

[–] sixtyj 1 day ago

Ad Astra. To the stars.

[–] __mharrison__ 1 day ago

Yeah, this was my initial thought as well... I guess they didn't ask anyone before choosing the new naming scheme. But that isn't particularly surprising.

[–] 80fj0348i 1 day ago

It doesn't help that the moon and sun have roughly the same apparent size in the sky

[–] dwaltrip 1 day ago

Size is by far the most obvious one, at least for me.

[–] taytus 1 day ago

Why on earth (no pun intended) would anyone do this?

[–] bgandrew1 1 day ago

Good God, what has happened to people here? You literally wrote that Luna is greater than Terra, Terra is greater than Sol and so on.

[–] Rexxar 1 day ago

Maybe just read this like an arrow?

[–] sheepscreek 1 day ago

    Luna  = Moon
    Terra = Earth
    Sol   = Sun
    Astra = Galaxy

[–] melasadra 1 day ago

I didnt know this but apparently Astra is the plural of astrum (latin for star).

[–] leontalbot 1 day ago

Cannot wait for Universe and Multiverse levels.

[–] picturesnottxt 1 day ago

Or perhaps they'll release Supernova, then Singularity to market their ASI model.

[–] drob518 1 day ago

In the multiverse version, the model isn’t any smarter, but it’s evil.

[–] ben_w 1 day ago

Only if it has a goatee, which is how we know Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man and Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange were only the heroes of their own narratives, and nobody else's.

[–] Mistletoe 1 day ago

“Let there be light.”

[–] joaogui1 1 day ago

Astra means star, like the Sun

[–] sheepscreek 1 day ago

I went by their illustration of GPT 6 Astra that looks like a spiral galaxy[1].

[1]: https://openai.com/index/gpt-6-astra/

[–] stavros 1 day ago

"Stars", if I'm being pedantic.

[–] MadameMinty 1 day ago

Not pedantic, the plural is the point. More than one star (Sol).

[–] itishappy 1 day ago

Astra > Sol > Terra > Luna seems clear enough to me

Leopard (10.5) and Yosemite (10.10) both came with clear version numbers

Model X and Model Y are siblings which do not have a clear hierarchical relationship

Gemini 4 Carbon and Gemini 4 Argon are rather difficult for me to tell at a glance

[–] MrCheeze 1 day ago

Confusingly, Carbon is another model in the same size class as Argon. Every other lab would have just called it Gemini 4.1 Argon.

[–] p_l 1 day ago

AFAIK they are all (Barium, Argon, Carbon) different checkpoints of the same (ongoing) training run

[–] epihelix 1 day ago

Ideally, Google would have run with:

Argon > Neon > Helium

That would have been the noble thing to do.

[–] itishappy 1 day ago

Or the other way around! Radon would have been an awesome name.

[–] petu 1 day ago

Luna/Terra/Sol/Astra make perfect sense, it indicates model tier/size with larger celestial body representing larger model.

Same for Anthropic, consistent model tier naming reused across model generations.

Those are just like i3/i5/i7 or M-series Pro/Max/Ultra.

But Carbon seems to be full replacement of Argon announced two weeks ago, they're same price. So Argon doesn't mean anything, they just picked random element.

[–] Marsymars 1 day ago

Both openai and anthropic names feel much more confusing than cpu names to me.

They'd be fine except every named model has multiple numbered versions, with no consistent relatioship between cost or capability corresponding to the version numbers going up or down.

[–] MadcapJake 1 day ago

Could it be an alphabetic system like Ubuntu's?

[–] abustamam 1 day ago

I thought the obvious next one would have been Boron then

[–] israrkhan 1 day ago

FYI, Model S, 3, X, Y is an acronym for S E X Y.

[–] thesdev 1 day ago

Lol feeling so dumb rn. How have I not noticed that before and how such an unserious guy is the richest man on earth?

[–] dingaling 1 day ago

The only hindrance for him was that Ford still held an automotive category trademark for Model E, hence Tesla had to go with Model 3.

[–] lambda 1 day ago

He is extremely unserious. Did you miss the part where he cheated at Diablo to try to seem to be some kind of dedicated gamer? Or, y'know, the whole Cybertruck? Or the "pedo guy" comment after his harebrained submersible idea went nowhere and a regular diver saved a bunch of Thai kids?

He's always been deeply unserious.

[–] abustamam 1 day ago

And DOGE

The pedo-guy comment though I think was him being serious, unfortunately.

[–] ben_w 1 day ago

And all the 420/69 references. And doing "let that sink in" as a live-action bit.

[–] MASNeo 1 day ago

Just that Z was on the market before 3 was, right?

[–] israrkhan 14 hours ago

do you mean X?

Fun fact. Model 3, was initially planned as Model E, but ford held rights to "Model E". They were also planning to release it earlier i guess but it got delayed. Took them some time to cut the cost

[–] lopotubez 1 day ago

Oh my god...I just realized SpaceX = Space Sex?

[–] p_l 1 day ago

Nah, Elon is well reported to have been crazy about "X.com" since ~2000 and thus it makes sense it got incorporated into SpaceX name

[–] TimPC 1 day ago

The original was that’s too lame for BitchX.doc and then it got replaced by all sorts of other things. Was an IRC meme before memes were a thing.

[–] user43928 1 day ago

Would it have been so hard to call it Gemini 4.1 or 4.5?

[–] siva7 1 day ago

Then how would you compete with Anthropic and OAI with such boring names?

[–] vorticalbox 1 day ago

Is this was xai isn’t winning because they still use numbers for grok releases?

[–] singingtoday 1 day ago

Do both like OAI and Anthropic do.

[–] sauwan 1 day ago

terra/sol or opus/haiku give an indication of size (the sun is bigger than the earth, opus is larger than a haiku). Carbon is smaller than argon (periodic table speaking), so that's no longer a helpful way of thinking about the model sizes...