Google releases model to rival OpenAI

Google launched Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, its “most thoughtful model yet” that’s capable of reasoning its way through complex tasks, in areas like programming, math, and physics. A bit like OpenAI’s o1 can.  

Powered by Google’s recently released LLM, Gemini Flash 2.0, Google’s reasoning model is supposedly quicker at responding than others (reasoning models take their time to ‘’think’’ and work their way through problems) and, although it appears to be similar in design to o1, it has one benefit that addresses a major concern with AI functioning as a ‘’black box, shrouded in mystery: It shows you what it’s “thinking”. It displays its workings out and explains why it’s come to the conclusion it has, offering users a more transparent experience and a clearer insight into how it works.

Although it's still in its “experimental” phase, Google is calling  Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking the “first step” in its “reasoning journey,” after reports came out a few months ago, stating they had hired a team of 200 to work on the technology. It also follows other reasoning model releases from DeepSeek (they released DeepSeek-R1 in early November) and Alibaba (they released their QwQ reasoning model late November).