Is ChatGPT 5.6 ACTUALLY Dumber? The Real Model Choice Guide

Summary

Forget benchmark scores; the real way to pick an AI model is to understand how you work. While many assume newer models are always better, the speaker finds themselves using ChatGPT 5.6, a model they describe as 'dumber' but incredibly effective for their detailed, technical prompts. This is contrasted with models like Fable 5, which excel at high-level conceptual thinking and ambiguity due to their larger pre-training datasets. The video emphasizes that AI models are becoming like distinct 'families' with unique strengths, not just different tiers of intelligence. OpenAI's family, for example, is great for long-running coding and understanding explicit instructions, while Anthropic's models are strong with philosophical tasks and high-level intent. The speaker argues that the tools currently available, like OpenAI's Codex harness, are fantastic for engineers but that dedicated, sophisticated tools for non-coding knowledge workers are still missing, an area ripe for innovation. Ultimately, the key takeaway is to choose the model that empowers you to do your best and hardest work, not the one with the highest score.