That said ... I do think Codex 5.2 was the best coding model for more complex tasks, albeit quite slow.
So very much looking forward to trying out 5.3.
https://gist.github.com/drorm/7851e6ee84a263c8bad743b037fb7a...
I typically use github issues as the unit of work, so that's part of my instruction.
I use 5.2 Codex for the entire task, then ask Opus 4.5 at the end to double check the work. It's nice to have another frontier model's opinion and ask it to spot any potential issues.
Looking forward to trying 5.3.
Every new model overfits to the latest overhyped benchmark.
Someone should take this to a logical extreme and train a tiny model that scores better on a specific benchmark.
But even an imperfect yardstick is better than no yardstick at all. You’ve just got to remember to maintain a healthy level of skepticism is all.
It's not just over-fitting to leading benchmarks, there's also too many degrees of freedom in how a model is tested (harness, etc). Until there's standardized documentation enabling independent replication, it's all just benchmarketing .
AI agents, perhaps? :-D
You can take off your tinfoil hat. The same models can perform differently depending on the programming language, frameworks and libraries employed, and even project. Also, context does matter, and a model's output greatly varies depending on your prompt history.
Cost to Run Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index:
GPT-5.2 Codex (xhigh): $3244
Claude Opus 4.5-reasoning: $1485
(and probably similar values for the newer models?)
Not throwing shade anyone's way. I actually do prefer Claude for webdev (even if it does cringe things like generate custom CSS on every page) -- because I hate webdev and Claude designs are always better looking.
But the meat of my code is backend and "hard" and for that Codex is always better, not even a competition. In that domain, I want accuracy and not speed.
Solution, use both as needed!
Ah and let me guess all your frontends look like cookie cutter versions of this: https://openclaw.dog/
This is the way. People are unfortunately starting to divide themselves into camps on this — it’s human nature we’re tribal - but we should try to avoid turning this into a Yankees Redsox.
Both companies are producing incredible models and I’m glad they have strengths because if you use them both where appropriate it means you have more coverage for important work.
Opus is the first model I can trust to just do things, and do them right, at least small things. For larger/more complex things I have to keep either model on extremely short leashes. But the difference is enough that I canceled my GPT Pro sub so I could switch to Claude. Maybe 5.3 will change things, but I also cannot continue to ethically support Sam Altman's business.
The only valid ARC AGI results are from tests done by the ARC AGI non-profit using an unreleased private set. I believe lab-conducted ARC AGI tests must be on public sets and taken on a 'scout's honor' basis that the lab self-administered the test correctly, didn't cheat or accidentally have public ARC AGI test data slip into their training data. IIRC, some time ago there was an issue when OpenAI published ARC AGI 1 test results on a new model's release which the ARC AGI non-profit was unable to replicate on a private set some weeks later (to be fair, I don't know if these issues were resolved). Edit to Add: Summary of what happened: https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMw_66c34055-740f-43a3-a63c-4b...
I have no expertise to verify how training-resistant ARC AGI is in practice but I've read a couple of their papers and was impressed by how deeply they're thinking through these challenges. They're clearly trying to be a unique test which evaluates aspects of 'human-like' intelligence other tests don't. It's also not a specific coding test and I don't know how directly ARC AGI scores map to coding ability.
As an analogy, Terence Tao may be one of the smartest people alive now, but IQ alone isn’t enough to do a job with no domain-specific training.
Hopefully performance will pick up after the rollout.