Researchers who helped to test OpenAI's new large language model, OpenAI o1, say it represents a big step up in terms of chatbots' usefulness to science.

"In my field of quantum physics, it gives significantly more detailed and coherent responses" than did the company's last model, GPT-4o, says Mario Krenn, leader of the Artificial Scientist Lab at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany.

OpenAI says that its o1 series marks a step change in the company's approach. The distinguishing feature of this artificial intelligence (AI) model, observers say, is that it has spent more time in certain stages of learning, and 'thinks' about its answers for longer, making it slower, but more capable -- especially in areas in which right and wrong answers can be clearly defined. The firm adds that o1 "can reason through complex tasks and solve harder problems than previous models in science, coding, and math".