OpenAI on Friday unveiled a new artificial intelligence system, OpenAI o3, which is designed to “reason” through problems involving math, science and computer programming.

The company said that the system, which it is currently sharing only with safety and security testers, outperformed the industry’s leading A.I. technologies on standardized benchmark tests that rate skills in math, science, coding and logic.

The new system is the successor to o1, the reasoning system that the company introduced earlier this year. OpenAI o3 was more accurate than o1 by over 20 percent in a series of common programming tasks, the company said, and it even outperformed its chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, on a competitive programming test. OpenAI said it plans to roll the technology out to individuals and businesses early next year.

“This model is incredible at programming,” said Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, during an online presentation to reveal the new system. He added that at least one OpenAI programmer could still beat the system on this test.

The new technology is part of a wider effort to build A.I. systems that can reason through complex tasks. Earlier this week, Google unveiled similar technology, called Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, and shared it with a small number of testers.

These two companies and others aim to build systems that can carefully and logically solve a problem through a series of steps, each one building on the last. These technologies could be useful to computer programmers who use A.I. systems to write code or to students seeking help from automated tutors in areas like math and science.