Cheap models, an ASI ban, and SI

Anthropic and OpenAI both shipped new models on Tuesday within roughly an hour of each other, and both led with price. Anthropic went first with Claude Opus 5.5. OpenAI followed with GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna.

Opus 5.5 is priced at $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output, about 20% below Opus 5. Anthropic says typical workloads should cost closer to 40% less because cache reads fell harder, and the company puts the model near Claude Fable 5.1 on most work. Simon Willison’s early notes put Sol at $2/$10 and Luna at $0.10/$0.50, about half the GPT-5.6 promotional rates. Both sit well behind GPT-6 Astra on capability, and both are meant to be cheaper and faster.

The launches land days after Dario Amodei and Sam Altman joined a public slowdown chorus. The models still went out on schedule, and cheaper tiers are exactly where Chinese competitors have been hurting them.

Slowdown talk and a same-day price war can live in the same calendar week because they answer different audiences. Investors and developers want cheaper tokens yesterday, and safety essays buy political cover while the release calendar keeps moving. When Opus 5.5 sits near Fable-level work for less money and Luna lands at a dime per million input, you can tell which pressure is winning the product roadmap.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar unveiled the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act on Wednesday morning. The Associated Press got the text first. The bill would permanently ban artificial superintelligence as defined in the statute, pause the most advanced AI work until a new Department of Artificial Intelligence writes safety rules, and require federal approval before those systems can be deployed. Violations could bring heavy penalties, including prison time of up to 20 years in some cases.

ASI, as the bill defines it, is a system that exceeds human cognitive ability or has enough capability to plan and execute the destruction or disempowerment of humanity. Several current employees at AI companies endorsed the measure in personal statements, including people from OpenAI and Google DeepMind who stressed they were not speaking for their employers.

The bill faces long odds in a Republican-controlled Congress. It also lands one day after Trump told the United Nations the United States should lean into the technology, not rein it in.

This bill is a marker for the progressive wing more than a near-term statute. Permanent ASI bans and a new department are hard sells on the Hill while the White House waves the opposite flag. Still, having named OpenAI and DeepMind staffers put their names on the endorsement sheet matters for the midterms and for 2028, when candidates will need a clearer line than “we are watching carefully.”

At the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump said the United States is “officially” renaming artificial intelligence to “super intelligence,” or SI, because the word artificial makes the tech sound fake. He rejected “globalist” schemes to control it, said the U.S. would encourage growth rather than rein it in, and argued that whoever wins SI wins the wider race with China.

The Verge and PBS both carried the remarks. Trump compared AI-risk warnings to climate and Russia stories he dismisses, then said the Justice Department would watch closely if needed. As of Wednesday morning, there was no confirmed executive order filing the rename into federal style guides the way Denali or the Gulf rename moved.

Renaming the field at the UN is peak Trump branding, and it may never show up in an actual federal document. The policy line underneath is clearer than the joke. He wants encouragement over restraint and a China race over safety essays, with the Justice Department held as a stick if needed. Sanders spent Wednesday morning defining ASI as something to ban. Trump spent Tuesday afternoon defining SI as something to cheer.

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