I spent a little time with the thinking model today. It's good. It's not better than GPT5 Pro. It might be better than the smallest GPT 5, though.

My current go-to test is to ask the LLM to construct a charging solution for my macbook pro with the model on it, but sadly, I and the pro have been sent to 15th century Florence with no money and no charger. I explain I only have two to three hours of inference time, which can be spread out, but in that time I need to construct a working charge solution.

So far GPT-5 Pro has been by far the best, not just in its electrical specifications (drawings of a commutator), but it generated instructions for jewelers and blacksmith in what it claims is 15th century florentine italian, and furnished a year-by year set of events with trading / banking predictions, a short rundown of how to get to the right folks in the Medici family, .. it was comprehensive.

Generally models suggest building an Alternating current setup and then rectifying to 5V of DC power, and trickle charging over the USB-C pins that allow trickle charging. There's a lot of variation in how they suggest we get to DC power, and often times not a lot of help on key questions, like, say "how do I know I don't have too much voltage using only 15th century tools?"

Qwen 3 VL is a mixed bag. It's the only model other than GPT5 I've talked to that suggested building a voltaic pile, estimated voltage generated by number of plates, gave me some tests to check voltage (lick a lemon, touch your tongue. Mild tingling - good. Strong tingling, remove a few plates), and was overall helpful.

On the other hand, its money making strategy was laughable; predicting Halley's comet, and in exchange demanding a workshop and 20 copper pennies from the Medicis.

Anyway, interesting showing, definitely real, and definitely useful.

> predicting Halley's comet, and in exchange demanding a workshop and 20 copper pennies from the Medicis

I love this! Simple and probably effective (or would get you killed for witchcraft)

Funny enough, I did a little bit of ChatGPT-assisted research into a loosely similar scenario not too long ago. LPT: if you happen to know in advance that you'll be in Renaissance Florence, make sure to pack as many synthetic diamonds as you can afford.

I JUST had a very intense dream that there was a catastrophic event that set humanity back massively, to the point that the internet was nonexistent and our laptops suddenly became priceless. The first thought I had was absolutely hating myself for not bothering to download a local LLM. A local LLM at the level of qwen is enough to massively jump start civilization.

That is a freaking insanely cool answer from gpt5