The AI Model Flood

Hello, and happy Sunday! This week was chock-full of new model releases from the major AI labs. Not only did OpenAI have three new ones—o3, GPT-4.1, o4-mini—but Anthropic released its research tool. As such, we published not one but two Vibe Checks because, yes, the vibes were good. If you’re searching for your next AI tool and confused by a bevy of models with similar names, let us decipher them for you.—Kate Lee

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Knowledge base

"Vibe Check: o3 Is Here—And It’s Great" by Dan Shipper/Chain of Thought: Remember those crime shows where someone yells "ENHANCE!" at a computer and it reveals crucial details in a blurry image? Dan Shipper took o3—OpenAI's new, truly agentic reasoning model—for a test drive and found that not only can it do such sci-fi magic, it can also analyze meeting transcripts to point out when he's avoiding conflict and create personalized ML courses that ping him daily. Read this if you want to understand why o3 represents the biggest "wow" moment since GPT-4 and how to use it to its fullest potential. 

“Vibe Check: OpenAI’s o3, GPT-4.1, and o4-mini” by Vivian Meng and Katie Parrott/Context Window: OpenAI just dropped three new models faster than we can learn their naming conventions. The Every team spent days testing each one to figure out which is worth your time. The difference between choosing the right or wrong model could be that between solving a Sudoku puzzle in seconds or burning through your token budget with nothing to show for it.

"A Science-based Guide to Thinking Creatively—With LLMs" by Rhea Purohit/Learning Curve: Creativity isn't some mystical force—it's a system you can hack, especially with the help of AI. Rhea Purohit introduces cognitive scientist Margaret Boden's framework, which breaks creativity into three trainable types. Read this if you want practical ways to use LLMs to shorten feedback loops, push past obvious ideas, and articulate your taste more precisely.

"AI Phobia Is Just Fear That ‘Easier’ Equals ‘Cheating’" by Katie Parrott/Working Overtime: Is using AI for professional work an easy way out? That’s the theory behind some zero-AI policies, but the aversion to AI is really a centuries-old cultural hangover from the Puritans that equates suffering with virtue and visible effort with value. Read this if you want to understand why we're so uncomfortable with tools that make work easier, and how AI might finally free us from the tyranny of performative productivity.