OpenAI Says Its Models Can Give the Financial Sector a Coding Makeover

Artificial intelligence has deciphered ancient scrolls and could even help humans communicate with other animals, but now OpenAI is using the technology for another difficult translation task—one that could have huge benefits for critical infrastructure like banking, nuclear energy, and government. The AI startup announced Monday that its latest models, including GPT-6 Astra and GPT-5.6 Sol, have shown “substantial improvements” in their ability to migrate old, outdated programming languages into newer ones. That’s potentially a big deal, since some of those dated languages are the lifeblood of some basic services we all depend on. COBOL, for example—short for “common business-oriented language”—still handles 95% of all ATM transactions, even though it was invented when Eisenhower was in the Oval Office (1959).