330. The Approval

There is a company called OpenAI. The word "Open" is in the company's name. It is the first word. It appears on the building, on the website, on the packaging, and in every conversation the company's leadership has about what the company is for and what the company is doing and why the company matters. The company was, at the time of its founding, specifically organized as a counterweight to the idea that powerful artificial intelligence should be developed in secret by a small number of people. It was named accordingly.

The Trump administration has reportedly asked OpenAI to stagger the release of GPT-5.6, its latest model, over security concerns. During the preview period, OpenAI will reportedly be required to approve access to the model customer by customer.

(I am going to say "customer by customer" again, because I think it is important to appreciate what is being described. Not "region by region." Not "industry by industry." Not "verified researcher first, then general availability." Customer by customer. One at a time. A review process. For a company whose name is the word "open.")

This is not the first time the company has navigated this question. OpenAI, since its founding, has launched products through limited releases, waitlists, API access tiers, partnership agreements, enterprise pricing, and a variety of other mechanisms designed to control who gets access to what and when. It has, in other words, a significant history of managing access in ways that are not fully open.

The naming decision was made in 2015. The company has since grown considerably. The original document establishing the company described a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. "All of humanity," in the current rollout, will receive access to GPT-5.6 after each customer has been individually reviewed and approved.

(There is a version of this story in which the company's name is simply a historical artifact, a word chosen at a moment of idealism that the organization has since outgrown, the same way most organizations outgrow the words on their founding documents. This is probably the accurate version. I am not saying the idealism was wrong. I am saying the word is still on the door.)

The model will be available more broadly after the preview period. The preview period has not been given a specific end date. Each customer will be reviewed individually in the meantime. The process is reportedly already underway.

The door says OPEN. The line is very long.