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Improved Gemini 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite

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Re: Improved Gemini 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite

#111

Okay this is a nitpick but why wouldn't you increment a part of the version number to signify that there is an improvement? These releases are confusing.

I wouldn't call that a nitpick, it's a major annoyance. Version numbers become useless with that kind of policy.

Re: Improved Gemini 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite

#112
post #51

Non-AI Summary: Both models have improved intelligence on Artificial Analysis index with lower end-to-end response time. Also 24% to 50% improved output token efficiency (resulting in lower cost). Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite improvements include better instruction following, reduced verbosity, stronger multimodal & translation capabilities. Gemini 2.5 Flash improvements include better agentic tool use and more token-effici…

Any idea what "output token efficiency" refers to? Gemini Flash is billed by number of input/output tokens, which I assume is fixed for the same output, so I'm struggling to understand how it could result in lower cost. Unless of course they have changed tokenization in the new version?

Models are less verbose, so produces fewer output tokens, so answers cost less.

Re: Improved Gemini 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite

#113
post #51

Non-AI Summary: Both models have improved intelligence on Artificial Analysis index with lower end-to-end response time. Also 24% to 50% improved output token efficiency (resulting in lower cost). Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite improvements include better instruction following, reduced verbosity, stronger multimodal & translation capabilities. Gemini 2.5 Flash improvements include better agentic tool use and more token-effici…

Any idea what "output token efficiency" refers to? Gemini Flash is billed by number of input/output tokens, which I assume is fixed for the same output, so I'm struggling to understand how it could result in lower cost. Unless of course they have changed tokenization in the new version?

They provide the answer in less words (while still conveying what needed to be said).

Which is a good thing in my book as the models now are way too verbose (and I suspect one of the reasons is the billing by tokens).

Re: Improved Gemini 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite

#114
post #42

Google seems to be the main foundation model provider that's really focusing on the latency/TPS/cost dimensions. Anthropic/OpenAI are really making strides in model intelligence, but underneath some critical threshold of performance, the really long thinking times make workflows feel a lot worse in collaboration-style tools, vs a much snappier but slightly less intelligent model. It's a delicate balance, because thes…

Can't agree with that. Gemini doesn't lead just on price/performance - ironically it's the best "normie" model most of the time, despite it's lack of popularity with them until very recent. It's bad at agentic stuff, especially coding. Incomparably so compared to Claude and now GPT-5. But if it's just about asking it random stuff, and especially going on for very long in the same conversation - which non-tech users h…

I recently started using Open WebUI, which lets you run your query on multiple models simultaneously. My anecdote: For non-coding tasks, Gemini 2.5 Pro beats Sonnet 4 handily. It's a lot more common to get wrong/hallucinated content from Sonnet 4 than Gemini.

Re: Improved Gemini 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite

#116
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They kinda have that already, no? https://openrouter.ai/apps?url=https%3A%2F%2Faider.chat%2F

Aggregating by tokens causes the problem simonw mentions in that one poweruser can skew the chart too much.

Right, that chart shows App usage based on the user-agent header but doesn't tell you if there is a single individual user of an app that skews the results.

Re: Improved Gemini 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chatgpt also has lots of reliability issues

If anyone from OpenAI is reading this, I have two complaints: 1. Using the "Projects" thing (Folder organization) makes my browser tab (on Firefox) become unusably slow after a while. I'm basically forced to use the default chats organization, even though I would like to organize my chats in folders. 2. After editing a message that you already sent,you get to select between the different branches of the chat (1/2, an…

And 3)

On mobile (android) opening the keyboard scrolls the chat to the bottom! I sometimes want to type referring something from the middle of the LLMs last answer.

Re: Improved Gemini 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite

#118
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't agree with that. Gemini doesn't lead just on price/performance - ironically it's the best "normie" model most of the time, despite it's lack of popularity with them until very recent. It's bad at agentic stuff, especially coding. Incomparably so compared to Claude and now GPT-5. But if it's just about asking it random stuff, and especially going on for very long in the same conversation - which non-tech users h…

My pet theory without any strong foundation is because OpenAI and Anthropic have trained their models really hard to fit the sycophantic mold of: =============================== Got it — *compliment on the info you've shared*, *informal summary of task*. *Another compliment*, but *downside of question*. ---------- (relevant emoji) Bla bla bla 1. Aspect 1 2. Aspect 2 ---------- *Actual answer* ----------- (checkmark e…

Not the case with GPT-5 I’d say. Sonnet 4 feels a lot like this, but the coding and agency of it is still quite solid and overall IMO the best coder. Gemini2.5 to me is most helpful as a research assistant. It’s quite good together with google search based grounding.

Re: Improved Gemini 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite

#119
post #74

I added support to these models to my llm-gemini plugin, so you can run them like this (using uvx so no need to install anything first): export LLM_GEMINI_KEY='...' uvx --isolated --with llm-gemini llm -m gemini-flash-lite-latest 'An epic poem about frogs at war with ducks' Release notes: https://github.com/simonw/llm-gemini/releases/tag/0.26 Pelicans: https://github.com/simonw/llm-gemini/issues/104#issuecomment...

Who wins in the end? the frogs? the ducks? or the pelicans?

This depends on the value of your LLM_GEMINI_KEY!

Re: Improved Gemini 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite

#120
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't agree with that. Gemini doesn't lead just on price/performance - ironically it's the best "normie" model most of the time, despite it's lack of popularity with them until very recent. It's bad at agentic stuff, especially coding. Incomparably so compared to Claude and now GPT-5. But if it's just about asking it random stuff, and especially going on for very long in the same conversation - which non-tech users h…

My pet theory without any strong foundation is because OpenAI and Anthropic have trained their models really hard to fit the sycophantic mold of: =============================== Got it — *compliment on the info you've shared*, *informal summary of task*. *Another compliment*, but *downside of question*. ---------- (relevant emoji) Bla bla bla 1. Aspect 1 2. Aspect 2 ---------- *Actual answer* ----------- (checkmark e…

Oh god I _hate_ this. Does anyone have any custom instructions to shut this thing off. The only thing that worked for me is to ask the model to be terse. But that causes the main answer part to be terse too, which sucks sometimes.
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