Monthly briefing

What changed in AI this month

A practical filter on what's happening in AI, written for UK small business owners. What matters, what to watch, and what you can safely ignore.

๐Ÿ“… September 2026
Matters now

GPT-6 Astra can now use a computer the way you do. Here's what that means for your admin.

OpenAI's newest model doesn't just answer questions. It can use a computer, clicking, typing and moving between websites to finish a task. That puts it squarely on the repetitive admin that eats a small business owner's week, but check where it actually shows up on your plan before getting excited.

What to do: If you're on ChatGPT Plus, look for Astra in ChatGPT Work rather than the normal chat window, and test it on one low-stakes, repetitive web task you can easily check.
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Worth watching

Is GPT-6 Astra AGI? OpenAI's own leaders can't agree, and that's the useful part.

Within days of GPT-6 Astra's launch, OpenAI's own president said the AGI era might have started, Nvidia's chief executive said it already had, and OpenAI's chief executive called AGI not a particularly useful word. That disagreement among the people closest to it is the real story here.

What to do: Don't worry about whether it counts as AGI. Ask the question you can actually test: can this model reliably do one specific task in your business?
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Worth watching

Google, OpenAI and Anthropic are building their own safety regulator. The version they wanted in July had the government in it.

AI safety standards would genuinely make life easier for a small business choosing tools. So it's worth paying attention to what's being proposed, and to what quietly dropped out of the plan between July and September. None of the three companies has confirmed any of it yet.

What to do: Nothing yet. But learn to ask one question of any "independently tested" or "meets safety standards" claim you see on a vendor's website: who set that standard, and what happens to them if they fail it?
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This briefing is updated in the first week of each month by Greg Shaw. AI Growth clients receive a longer, personalised version.

โ† August 2026