Do we have a new best AI model, or do we have the downfall of benchmarks in general, as a way of capturing machine intelligence? Full breakdown of Gemini 3.1 Pro, guest-starring the new Sonnet 4.6, plus analysis from 7 papers/posts that will give you much needed context. Oh, and a new record on Simple Bench!

https://epoch.ai/ai-explained-datacenters


Check out my fast-growing (!) app, free to use, and code INSIDER15 for Pro: https://lmcouncil.ai

AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained


Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:30 - Post-training Dominance
04:00 - ARC-AGI 2 Caveat
05:54 - Simple Bench Record
08:22 - Hallucination Caveat
10:05 - Model Card
11:12 - Exponential Coming
12:20 - Amodei on Generalizing
15:10 - One True Benchmark?
17:02 - Other Metrics…

Gemini 3.1 Model Card: https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/Model-Cards/Gemini-3-1-Pro-Model-Card.pdf

Release: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-3-1-pro/

Where are Agents deployed?: https://www.anthropic.com/research/measuring-agent-autonomy

Newsletter Post: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/p/4-ai-numbers-that-surprised-me-this-week

Hallucination AA: https://artificialanalysis.ai/evaluations/omniscience

Melanie Mitchell: https://x.com/MelMitchell1/status/2022738363548340526
ARC-AGI-2: https://x.com/arcprize/status/2024522812728496470/photo/1

Chollet on Agentic Coding and ML: https://x.com/fchollet/status/2024519439140737442

METR Caveat: https://metr.org/notes/2026-01-22-time-horizon-limitations/

Talaas Fast: https://chatjimmy.ai/

Amodei Interview Continual learning: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dario-amodei-2?open=false#%C2%A7002942-is-continual-learning-necessary-how-will-it-be-solved

Metaculus FutureEval: https://www.metaculus.com/futureeval/

Next Vid to Watch: https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-you-need-to-150647292



Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

Podcast: https://aiexplainedopodcast.buzzsprout.com/

The two models that you will hear discussed for at least the next two months - Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT 5.3 Codex - just got released within 26 mins or each other. The full breakdown of around 250 pages of reports, with just the most interest moments, from the battle of which is best, Claude personhood, the surprising misbehaviour of Opus 4.6, and much more

https://assemblyai.com/aiexplained

Check out my fast-growing (!) app, free to use, and code INSIDER15 for Pro: https://lmcouncil.ai

AI Insiders ($9): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:54 - Self-improvement?
02:44 - Knowledge Work
05:30 - Overly agentic behaviour
09:12 - Who Shouldn’t Use Claude Opus
11:39 - Step-change?
15:09 - Claude’s ‘Personhood’

Hassabis Roadmap: https://www.patreon.com/posts/hassabis-roadmap-149750869

Release of Opus 4.6: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-6
212 Page System Card: https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/0dd865075ad3132672ee0ab40b05a53f14cf5288.pdf
Claude Code Tip: https://x.com/bcherny/status/2019475897691124107


GPT Codex 5.3: https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5-3-codex/

System Card: https://openai.com/index/gpt-5-3-codex-system-card/

Browse Comp: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.12516v1
Finance Agent: https://www.vals.ai/benchmarks/finance_agent
Terminal Bench 2: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.11868
Vending Bench: https://andonlabs.com/blog/opus-4-6-vending-bench

My X post: https://x.com/AIExplainedYT/status/2016851303436095647

Anthropic Apology: https://x.com/ch402/status/2014066134194995256/photo/1

Altman rebuttal: https://x.com/sama/status/2019139174339928189
https://x.com/sama/status/2019140276246442089

4% of GitHub: https://x.com/dylan522p/status/2019490550911766763



Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

Podcast: https://aiexplainedopodcast.buzzsprout.com/

Anthropic's CEO, who has consistently predicted transformative AI will arrive before 2030, recently published a nearly 20,000-word essay outlining his vision of where AI is heading. The video gives you the highlights. The essay argues that scaling and recursion will advance AI from coding automation to full engineering automation, while warning of economic displacement within 1-2 years and China's trajectory toward AI-enabled totalitarianism. Additionally, Dario Amodei predicts that AI models will increasingly be understood as collections of distinct personas rather than monolithic systems.

80,000 Hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B54EQiuO1UU



Check out my fast-growing (!) app, free to use, and code INSIDER15 for Pro: https://lmcouncil.ai

AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained


Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
01:10 - Scaling to software engineers
06:11 - Permanent Underclass
10:18 - Totalitarian Nightmares
16:38 - Collection of Personas

Essay: https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology

Physics Prediction: https://www.quantamagazine.org/is-particle-physics-dead-dying-or-just-hard-20260126/

Axios: https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic

World GDP: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2024&start=1961&view=chart

Demis Hassabis Counter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6fq4_uP7aM

Karpathy 80%: https://x.com/karpathy/status/2015883857489522876

Machines of Loving Grace: https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace

Anthropic LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5aKRshJzhojqfbRyo/unless-its-governance-changes-anthropic-is-untrustworthy#1__In_private__Dario_frequently_said_he_won_t_push_the_frontier_of_AI_capabilities__later__Anthropic_pushed_the_frontier

Original Constitution: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claudes-constitution

New Constitution: https://www.anthropic.com/constitution

Kimi K2.5: https://x.com/Kimi_Moonshot/status/2016024049869324599

Societies of Thought, Google DeepMind Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.10825

https://lmcouncil.ai/benchmarks

https://www.patreon.com/posts/our-new-age-of-133960279



Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

Podcast: https://aiexplainedopodcast.buzzsprout.com/

A new tool, with code written by an AI model, has gone omega-viral: Claude Cowork. But is the hype justified? What do the stats say on productivity? Where is the truth in a sea of noise? What is truth? Can we handle the truth? Where's Nemo?

https://matsprogram.org/s26-aie


Check out my new app! https://lmcouncil.ai

AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
01:12 - Claude Cowork
06:48 - Productivity Speed-up + jobs
09:33 - Comparing Models
12:00 - Brittle AI Paper

Cowork Intro: https://x.com/claudeai/thread/2010805682434666759

'All of it': https://x.com/bcherny/status/2010813886052581538

'AGI' Claims: https://x.com/deepfates/status/2004994698335879383

Douglas Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOsNrV3bXtQ&t=2313s

Job Stats: https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Evidence-of-an-AI-driven-shakeup-of-job-markets-is-patchy.pdf
Amodei Prediction: https://fortune.com/2025/05/28/anthropic-ceo-warning-ai-job-loss/

GenAI Traffic: https://x.com/demishassabis/status/2009075877347512545

Illusion of Insight: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.00514
Entropy Exploration: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.14758
ProRL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.24864

Genesis Mission: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/11/launching-the-genesis-mission/
https://deepmind.google/blog/how-were-supporting-better-tropical-cyclone-prediction-with-ai/


Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

Podcast: https://aiexplainedopodcast.buzzsprout.com/

It’s probably not possible to satisfactorily condense a 12 month’s worth of weird progress in AI, as well as predictions for the year to come, into one video. But I’m gonna try anyway because it has been a very strange time.

http://matsprogram.org/s26-aie


My new app! https://lmcouncil.ai


Patreon Interview: https://www.patreon.com/posts/robot-in-your-27-146376094

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:34 - Reasoning Models … and limits
02:54 - A playable world
03:36 - Realism
03:50 - AI Slop gone mainstream
05:03 - DolphinGemma
05:39 - Public Mood
07:34 - AI Enlisted
08:30 - GPT-5
11:05 - Open Weight not out
13:00 - METR Breakout
17:30 - VASA-1
18:28 - Lateral Productivity
20:15 - 1 or 1000 benchmarks needed?
24:54 - Continual Learning + Altman on Superintelligence
28:08 - Automated Information Discovery ft AlphaEvolve


Hassabis on Generality: https://x.com/demishassabis/status/2003097405026193809
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqVbypvxDto

Gemini 3: https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/original_images/gemini_3_table_final_HLE_Tools_on.gif
Reasoning Trade-offs: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.13837

DolphinGemma: https://blog.google/technology/ai/dolphingemma/?s=09

Genie 3: https://deepmind.google/blog/genie-3-a-new-frontier-for-world-models/

METR Time Horizon: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.14499
https://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/
Flaws: https://x.com/ShashwatGoel7/status/2002369517499105443
https://shash42.substack.com/p/how-to-game-the-metr-plot
https://x.com/METR_Evals/status/2002203627377574113

GPT-5 - Altman phd in everything: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/14/business/chatgpt-rollout-problems

https://simple-bench.com/

AI Slop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_3vxoJDD9k
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/16/boost-for-artists-in-ai-copyright-battle-as-only-3-per-cent-back-uk-active-opt-out-plan

Survey: https://x.com/SearchlightInst/status/2001057144842387920/photo/1

Nvidia Nemotron: https://x.com/percyliang/status/2000608134205985169

OpenAI Compute Flywheel: https://x.com/OpenAI/status/2001363007209914399/photo/1
Altman Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P27Ef-LLuQ

AI in Govt: https://x.com/jdcmedlock/status/1939814516503847259

Benchmark Gaming: https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/07/meta-exec-denies-the-company-artificially-boosted-llama-4s-benchmark-scores/

AlphaEvolve: https://deepmind.google/blog/alphaevolve-a-gemini-powered-coding-agent-for-designing-advanced-algorithms/
https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/DeepMind.com/Blog/alphaevolve-a-gemini-powered-coding-agent-for-designing-advanced-algorithms/AlphaEvolve.pdf?utm_source=deepmind.google&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=gdm&utm_content=
Continual Learning: https://abehrouz.github.io/files/NL.pdf

Job Risk: https://archive.ph/20250708204527/https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic

GPT4o: https://x.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1916889492172013989

Vasa-1: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/vasa-1/

Three Views: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K2D45BNxnZjdpSX2j/ai-timelines
Turing Test: https://x.com/tunguz/status/1907185471211422147

Karpathy Year in Review: https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/year-in-review-2025/

LLM Brainrot: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.13928

Lateral Productivity: https://www.aisi.gov.uk/frontier-ai-trends-report

Emotional Quotient: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.08394

Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

Podcast: https://aiexplainedopodcast.buzzsprout.com/


AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained

The condensed highlights of hours of AI lab leader interviews, model releases, Gemini 3 Flash insights (plus it’s hidden flaw), Hassabis’ ‘proto-AGI’ and much more…

https://matsprogram.org/apply?utm_source=ai-explained&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=s26

Also, do check out my new app: https://lmcouncil.ai

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:50 - Results
02:44 - But… the Flaw
04:49 - So Benchmarks are fake? No
07:37 - Spatial Reasoning + Hassabis
10:06 - Proto-AGI
12:07 - Minimal AGI
15:07 - Compute Slowdown
17:56 - New Data Paradigm

Gemini 3 Flash: https://deepmind.google/models/gemini/flash/

Hassabis Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqVbypvxDto
Legg Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3u_FAv33G0
Pre-training Lead Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNGDAqFXvew
Altman Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P27Ef-LLuQ
Brockman Video: https://x.com/OpenAI/status/2001336514786017417
Post-Training Reveal: https://x.com/OfficialLoganK/status/2001742530472534442

Hallucinations Paper: https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/d04913be-3f6f-4d2b-b283-ff432ef4aaa5/why-language-models-hallucinate.pdf
Patreon Hallucinations Vid: https://www.patreon.com/posts/blockers-to-and-139264812
AA-Omniscience Benchmark: https://artificialanalysis.ai/evaluations/omniscience
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.13029


lmcouncil.ai/benchmarks
https://simple-bench.com/
https://x.com/scaling01/status/1999620587744813205

5.2 Codex Drop: https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/ac7c37ae-7f4c-4442-b741-2eabdeaf77e0/oai_5_2_Codex.pdf

OpenAI Compute Trend: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openais-350-billion-computing-cost-problem?rc=sy0ihq

Cramer Tweet/Response: https://x.com/BorisMPower/status/2001440650210976018

OpenAI Valuation: ​​https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-discussed-raising-tens-billions-valuation-around-750-billion?rc=sy0ihq

Indian Data: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/with-freebies-openai-google-vie-indian-users-training-data-2025-12-17/

TheInformation Data: https://x.com/theinformation/status/2001421225751351778

Genie 3: https://deepmind.google/blog/genie-3-a-new-frontier-for-world-models/
Sima 2: https://deepmind.google/blog/sima-2-an-agent-that-plays-reasons-and-learns-with-you-in-virtual-3d-worlds/
Veo 3.1: https://deepmind.google/blog/sima-2-an-agent-that-plays-reasons-and-learns-with-you-in-virtual-3d-worlds/

METR: https://metr.org/blohttps://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/


AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained


Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

Full GPT-5.2 breakdown - did OpenAI reclaim the crown? A story of tokens, time and cost, plus 9 details you wouldn’t get just from reading the headlines.

https://www.youtube.com/@eightythousandhours



AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained
https://lmcouncil.ai

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:55 - Better than Human @ Professional Tasks?
04:42 - Test time Compute
07:05 - Benchmark Selection
09:32 - Simple Results + council comparison
13:01 - Long Context
13:52 - Self-Improvement
15:00 - 10 Years + New Models

Release Page: https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5-2/

GPT 5.2 Benchmark Comparison: https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1pka1y9/gpt52_all_20_benchmarks_rankings_and_pricing/
https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/original_images/gemini_3_table_final_HLE_Tools_on.gif
https://lmcouncil.ai/benchmarks

Charxiv: https://charxiv.github.io/#leaderboard

GDPval: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.04374
My vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK5LxMaROSA

Kilpatrick: https://x.com/OfficialLoganK/status/1999270402712023158/photo/1

Noam Brown: https://x.com/polynoamial/status/1999189845164667132

New Model in New Year: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-developing-garlic-model-counter-googles-recent-gains?rc=sy0ihq

10 Years of OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/ten-years/

GPQA: https://x.com/idavidrein/status/1841265634170278063

ARC-AGI 1-2: https://arcprize.org/arc-agi/2/

Sunday Robotics: https://x.com/tonyzzhao/status/1991204839578300813


Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/


https://lmcouncil.ai

With headlines of an imminent job apocalypse, code red for ChatGPT and recursive self-improvement, at the same time as Anthropic's CEO yesterday saying we know how to scale to AGI, and Gemini 3 DeepThink out today, it is easy to get lost among the narratives and counter-narratives. So here are both, plus the facts behind them, for you to decide.


https://epoch.ai/data/data-centers

Epoch AI is the sponsor of today’s video, and my views, and those expressed in this video, do not necessarily reflect Epoch AI’s views in any way.


Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:42 - Job Apocalypse?
01:45 - Scaling to AGI
04:15 - Recursive Self-Improvement Needed, or Not
09:57 - OpenAI Code Red vs Gemini 3 DeepThink vs Claude Opus 4.5
13:27 - DeepSeek Speciale vs Mistral Large v3
16:45 - Claude Soul Document

https://lmcouncil.ai/

AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained

Guardian Interview: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/dec/02/jared-kaplan-artificial-intelligence-train-itself

MIT Study on Jobs/Tasks: https://iceberg.mit.edu/report.pdf
vs https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/26/mit-study-finds-ai-can-already-replace-11point7percent-of-us-workforce.html

Amodei on Scaling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEj7wAjwQIk
Claude Soul Document: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vpNG99GhbBoLov9og/claude-4-5-opus-soul-document

Capabilities Original Stance: https://www.anthropic.com/news/core-views-on-ai-safety

Ilya Interview: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/ilya-sutskever-2

Ricursive Intelligence: https://x.com/RicursiveAI/status/1995932204703346946

Economist Worker Usage of GenAI: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/11/26/investors-expect-ai-use-to-soar-thats-not-happening#selection-1409.94-1413.42

Mistral v3 Large: https://docs.mistral.ai/models/mistral-large-3-25-12

Compute Slowdown Paper: https://joel-becker.com/images/publications/forecasting_time_horizon_under_compute_slowdown.pdf
https://x.com/joel_bkr/status/1993023436541903155

METR Chart: https://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openais-350-billion-computing-cost-problem?rc=sy0ihq

OpenAI Code Red: https://www.anthropic.com/news/core-views-on-ai-safety
Rocket Company: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sam-altman-rocket-elon-musk-spacex-b2878351.html

DeepSeek Paper: https://arxiv.org/html/2512.02556v1

DeepSeek Crowdstrike CCP: https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/crowdstrike-researchers-identify-hidden-vulnerabilities-ai-coded-software/

https://simple-bench.com/

Patreon Post: https://www.patreon.com/c/aiexplained/posts

Robot: https://x.com/jloganolson/status/1985850115379351799