GPT-6 Astra Won Me Over. Then It Got the Details Wrong.

Dave: GPT -6 Astra is here and if you saw the tech demos you'd be amazed that you can now create 3D games Dave: of rockets and renders of New York street by street. Who needs to do any of that in their Dave: day -to -day work? Not me. We are here at AI Operators. This is a field note and we're going Dave: to talk about how we've practically used GPT -6 in ways that have genuinely helped us with our Dave: business. That's right field notes is where we share our notes from the field. Actual real Dave: stories and examples of how we are using AI tools in actual use cases not just these fancy demos. Dave: Now GPT -6 is very good it's also just as stupid as every other model in different ways. So this is Dave: as usual here on AI Operators we're not here to hype bro and say everything's the best thing ever Dave: but I have been pretty impressed with Astra 6 and I'm going to talk about my website and how it's Dave: helped me. So some time ago a few months back I decided I wanted to do something different with Dave: my website. I went for the same thing. I went for the same thing. I went for the same thing. Dave: Cinematic scroll look where I had this sort of synthwave plane and I decided to put these 3D Dave: shapes that kind of symbolically reference the content a little bit. I didn't want them there Dave: all the time. I actually as I iterated imagined what this might look like. I had this vision that Dave: maybe I'd have like little drones that would fly along and then they'd fly up and build shapes. Dave: I could not get the models to do that for me. As much as I tried to describe drones and shapes Dave: flying up and appearing I could not get the models to do that for me. I could not get the models to do that for me. Dave: So I settled. I settled on okay we'll just have the wireframes there the whole time and as we zoom Dave: through they pop up and that'll be good enough. But like as you can see this wireframes it's Dave: interesting. It's different. It's on brand with the whites and the oranges and blues but it felt Dave: a bit unfinished. And so here's hot tip number one when you're doing things like web design and Dave: stuff. Get something out but then pass that back into the AI. Not because the AI can recode it Dave: better but use the image generation skill. Dave: And what I did is I asked ChatGPT to sort of make this feel more synth wave -ish and I did this. I gave Dave: it a screenshot and it turned it into this reference image and all of a sudden I'm like Dave: wow all those blues and those gradients and the mountains in the background. I love that. That is Dave: so good. We need to take the website in that direction. And so I started trying to get the Dave: models to go in that direction. In fact on Sunday night while I watched the Monza Italia Dave: and F1 I spent some time with Grok 4 .6 and I think if you look at the dates here September 6th Dave: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 about 20 commits I spent trying to get Dave: Grok 4 .6 to make my side look like that. And it went through different iterations. I got this Dave: version where we got some really nice sort of glass shimmering effects on the on the on the Dave: glyphs. That was kind of cool. But look at the mountains. The mountains look ridiculous. And so Dave: I tried again and I got ridiculous looking mountains again and again and again. It could Dave: not nail the mountains for me. So I was like forget the mountains. How about we put a constellation? Dave: How about put some stars like the Southern Cross? Because you know I'm in Australia. Let's put the Dave: Southern Cross up on the sky instead of mountains. And it gave me this where it gave me the some Dave: weird cross and the Dave: pointer. But the constellation has joined at the bottom there. And I'm like what are you doing? Dave: Okay forget the little lines on the constellation. Just show me the stars as these little shimmery Dave: crystal things. So did this. And again I'm like why is the Southern Cross backwards? And why is it Dave: like square and not stretched out? I would have thought these models like Grok 4 .6 as a frontier Dave: model would know what the Southern Cross looked like. And I wouldn't actually have to describe it Dave: out in great detail. But it didn't. Dave: It just couldn't get it. It just kept doing stupid things. I'm not going to show you all 20 Dave: iterations. But just to give you an idea. This was what I was up against. To the point that I was like Dave: you know what can we just shrink the constellation. I finally got to know where the stars were. And Dave: just put it back in the sky. Because otherwise it kind of looked just pasted in. It looked rubbish. Dave: And I got this version where you can barely see the constellation in the back there. Maybe just Dave: a little bit. And we kept the the glyphs on. They're cutting through the floor. But look at this Dave: really nice shimmer. And it was okay. And I got the blue the blue thing. It felt more finished Dave: than my old white wireframe one. But then Astra came out. And to be fair Astra came out before I Dave: did all this in Grok. But I wasn't convinced I wanted to burn the tokens on Astra. I was a little Dave: bit like I've got to manage my quota. But on Monday I watched one of the hype bro videos on Dave: YouTube around Astra. And I was like the best 20 uses for Astra. And they're all about 3D rendering. Dave: And they made the point that you know it's 3D rendering. And I was like oh my god. And I was like Dave: Astra is really good at 3D. And I was like hmm. I wonder do I have a 3D project I'm working on. I Dave: don't want to re -render New York City in the Unreal Engine or in Blender. But I would like Dave: some mountains in the back of my website. So I said to Astra here's the reference image. Can you Dave: put mountains in this website. And what did it do. It nailed it. First freaking time. Boom. All of a Dave: sudden you're in the middle of the middle of the mountain. You know. I'm like I'm not looking at Dave: which felt really a lot like the ones I'd want it here. When I looked at this I went I like those Dave: mountains. And then I look at what Astra gave me. I'm like that's pretty good. That fits there. The Dave: fog. So you get that sort of smooth transitioning. It brought the constellation in and nailed the Dave: Southern Cross first go. Made it super clear and easy to see. I'm like that's amazing. And you Dave: might also notice all the glyphs are gone. Where did all the polygons go. That's because once it gave Dave: me the mountains I went hey. Dave: That's okay. Dave: what about drones what do you think about drones astra do you think you could manage that the glyphs Dave: are projected from the drones and as you scroll through the site they pop up and they're rendered Dave: and then go away again and the drones fly along and it goes sure no worries dave i'll do that for Dave: you so now i have my little drones they fly along they pop up they render an image it rotates a bit Dave: i keep scrolling and the drones just move along and render with each content card amazing Dave: just amazing i couldn't get other models before astra to understand any of this astra now there's Dave: pretty much one shot now like i said it's not perfect sometimes it's not those glyphs i've Dave: been working on the copy since i got the new version up i'm going okay now i can change some Dave: of the content then i'm going to need new little glyph images to match the Dave: content i'm going to need new little glyph images to match the content i'm going to need new little Dave: content and sometimes it's trash and you're going to go what are you doing that looks stupid Dave: why did you do that change that it's still not perfect another great example of where astra is Dave: not perfect is where i was doing some development and it said go put that on the staging database Dave: and i said well i haven't built a staging database for that project yet and i said oh you need to go Dave: create a brand new thing and then we'll do this and i was like can't we just branch a cloned Dave: staging database from the core one why do we have to create this separate thing goes oh you're right Dave: i should have caught that Dave: it's still an llm it still relies on human judgment and human expertise to really drive Dave: it effectively but when it's running in its wheelhouse like working out how to render Dave: geometric mountains it's pretty good pretty good so anyway that is my field note experience Dave: with gpt6 astra it's actually pretty good and since then on some of my other projects i've Dave: given it long running tasks and it's iterating through and really moving forward things that Dave: i've had trouble getting other models to really just nail block by block build by build long running Dave: builds so overall i am a fan of gpt6 astra i think it is quite good it's not perfect but it's pretty Dave: good have you used gpt6 astra has it wowed you are you doing lots of 3d stuff with it or something Dave: else um i'm keen to hear from you all around your experiences with gpt6 astra or if you think Dave: there's another model that is better and cheaper please share that one with us i'd love to give Dave: that one a go too Dave: and we'll see you on the next one