# "Astra can do a concerning amount with no chain of thought" by Neel Nanda

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401/astra-can-do-a-concerning-amount-with-no-chain-of-thought-by-neel-nanda
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401/astra-can-do-a-concerning-amount-with-no-chain-of-thought-by-neel-nanda.md
Podcast: [LessWrong (Curated & Popular)](https://stenobird.com/podcast/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401)
Published: 2026-09-10T14:45:21+00:00
Episode link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2037297/episodes/19785259-astra-can-do-a-concerning-amount-with-no-chain-of-thought-by-neel-nanda.mp3
Audio file: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2037297/episodes/19785259-astra-can-do-a-concerning-amount-with-no-chain-of-thought-by-neel-nanda.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401/episodes/astra-can-do-a-concerning-amount-with-no-chain-of-thought-by-neel-nanda
Duration seconds: 1280

## Resource

TLDR: Astra has 8.6x better odds of doing a reasoning task without CoT than the next best model (Fable 5.1), and can do 7.2 serial arithmetic steps in a forward pass vs 4.1 for the next best model (Gemini 3.8 Flash/Fable 5.1) Epistemic status: Heavily LLM-dependent research, and the precise results are somewhat sensitive to researcher decisions, but I’ve done enough sanity checks that I’d be surprised if the core claims were misleading One of the most striking things in the Astra report ...

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401/episodes/astra-can-do-a-concerning-amount-with-no-chain-of-thought-by-neel-nanda/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401/astra-can-do-a-concerning-amount-with-no-chain-of-thought-by-neel-nanda.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.