Don't Worry About the Vase

Claude Opus 4.5 did so well on the METR task length graph they’re going to need longer tasks, and we still haven’t scored Gemini 3 Pro or GPT-5.2-Codex. Oh, also there’s a GPT-5.2-Codex.

At week’s end we did finally get at least a little of a Christmas break. It was nice.

Also nice was that New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the RAISE Act, giving New York its own version of SB 53. The final version was not what we were hoping it would be, but it still is helpful on the margin.

Various people gave their 2026 predictions. Let’s put it this way: Buckle up.

Continue reading →

This week I covered GPT 5.2, which I concluded is a frontier model only for the frontier.

OpenAI also gave us Image 1.5 and a new image generation mode inside ChatGPT. Image 1.5 looks comparable to Nana Banana Pro, it’s hard to know which is better. They also inked a deal for Disney’s characters, then sued Google for copyright infringement on the basis of Google doing all the copyright infringement.

As a probable coda to the year’s model releases we also got Gemini 3 Flash, which I cover in this post. It is a good model given its speed and price, and likely has a niche. It captures the bulk of Gemini 3 Pro’s intelligence quickly, at a low price.

Here we go again, only a few weeks after GPT-5.1 and a few more weeks after 5.0.

There weren’t major safety concerns with GPT-5.2, so I’ll start with capabilities, and only cover safety briefly starting with ‘Model Card and Safety Training’ near the end.

Table of Contents

1. The Bottom Line.
2. Introducing GPT-5.2.
3. Official Benchmarks.
4. GDPVal.
5. Unofficial Benchmarks.
6. Official Hype.
7. Public Reactions.
8. Positive Reactions.
9. Personality Clash.
10. Vibing the Code.
11. Negative Reactions.
12. But Thou Must (Follow The System Prompt).
13. Slow.
14. Model Card And Safety Training.
15. Deception.
16. Preparedness Framework.
17. Rush Job.
18. Frontier Or Bust.

The Bottom Line

ChatGPT-5.2 is a frontier model for those who need a frontier model.