OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

So at this point OpenAI has 6 reasoning models, 4 flagship chat models, and 7 cost optimized models. So that's 17 models in total and that's not even counting their older models and more specialized ones. Compare this with Anthropic that has 7 models in total and 2 main ones that they promote.

This is just getting to be a bit much, seems like they are trying to cover for the fact that they haven't actually done much. All these models feel like they took the exact same base model, tweaked a few things and released it as an entirely new model rather than updating the existing ones. In fact based on some of the other comments here it sounds like these are just updates to their existing model, but they release them as new models to create more media buzz.

> This is just getting to be a bit much, seems like they are > trying to cover for the fact that they haven't actually done much

Or perhaps they're trying to make some important customers happy by showing movement on areas the customers care about. Subjectively, customers get locked in by feeling they have the inside track, and these small tweaks prove that. Objectively, the small change might make a real difference to the customer's use case.

Similarly, it's important to force development teams to actually ship, and shipping more frequently reduces risk, so this could reflect internal discipline.

As for media buzz, OpenAI is probably trying to tamp that down; they have plenty of first-mover advantage. More puffery just makes their competitors seem more important, and the risk to their reputation of a flop is a lot larger than the reward of the next increment.

As for "a bit much", before 2023 I was thinking I could meaningfully track progress and trade-off's in selecting tech, but now the cat is not only out of the bag, it's had more litters than I can count. So, yeah - a bit much!