Benchmarks

People want one answer to "which AI is best," and there is not one. There is a best model for coding, a best for long documents, a best for cheap bulk work, and a best for running on your own hardware, and they are rarely the same model. Here is how I actually pick, in mid-2026, after using all four families on real work.

Every model launch comes with a chart where the new model is tallest. The charts are technically true and practically useless, because they are marketing wearing a lab coat. Here is how to read a benchmark like a skeptic, so a leaderboard never again talks you into the wrong model for your actual work.

Read enough launch posts and you notice something strange: every new model is state of the art. All of them. Simultaneously. That cannot be true, and yet each chart is technically honest. Welcome to the benchmark wars, where nobody is exactly lying and almost everyone is being misled, gently, on purpose.