I guess this "limited set of organizations" is just the standard now. It's just incredibly deflating to see my future as a second class citizen has already come

Brother they can't even release the announcement post cleanly without it constantly going down, they certainly wouldn't be able to release this new model without doing so in stages.

When Open AI announced that Astra was the first to reach the "Critical" level in cybersecurity it also said that advanced cyber capabilities are initially provided to a narrow circle of alpha testers like the US government and trusted organizations that Open AI doesn't name. To my mind the "Critical" level itself is an internal scale of Open AI its own Preparedness Framework and not an external audit.

If Tech CEOs consider this morally ok, then it is.

More optimistic take: we'll only be second-class for a few months, if the pattern of Chinese models catching-up holds.

Same. Fortunately DeepSeek keeps getting better.

create a life where your 'wealth' is decoupled from third party orgs.

They simply refuse my applications to slightly less restricted models without any explanations. And the current ones refuse automatically to work with me on my papers as soon as they see the word "epidemiology".

I am a researcher in a Swiss university btw.

This has always been the case for people that have not had piles of money.

I mean do you get access to the best yachts?

To the top of the 5 star hotels?

To the best resorts?

To the best military equipment?

Hell, the best computer equipment has nearly always been out of reach of the average person.

Is it really that hard to wait couple of days?

Oh please. They do closed betas - hardly makes you a "second class citizen".