Google released yet another Gemini AI model, and this one can reason

There are so many artificial intelligence products out there nowadays that it can be hard to keep track of advancements each of them makes, especially when marketing buzzwords get mixed in with underlying tech. Google Gemini was first released to the masses earlier in 2024, and although it’s by far not the first AI product that Google has worked on and released, it’s certainly the best effort the company has put forth in the realm. Every few months, Gemini has come out with a new version, and at the end of 2024, Gemini 2.0’s experimental model has been released, and with it comes better underlying performance. With it, a new experimental reasoning model has been released.

Google released the Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental model today in AI Studio, the company’s AI prototyping platform. It’s built off of the newly unveiled Gemini 2.0 model, and it seems to be similar to OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model, according to TechCrunch. Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean says that this new experimental reasoning model is “trained to use thoughts to strengthen its reasoning,” but when Kyle Wiggers of TechCrunch tested the model out, it struggled to answer the simple question of how many times the letter “R” is in the word “strawberry” (Gemini said it appeared twice).

Reasons for reasoning

Obviously, the explosion of AI products has led to companies trying to differentiate themselves from the competition, and that usually comes through their naming and marketing conventions. All AI models “reason” to some extent. Gemini 2.0 Flash is meant to work in a “flash” as a lightweight model, and AI that can reason still works off of what it already has access to. A distinct positive of reasoning models is that they fact-check themselves, essentially showing the work that your elementary school math teacher told you was necessary back in the day. That’s great, but it uses a ton of extra power and takes a longer amount of time than “typical” AI models utilize.

Regardless, reasoning models are here, but the jury still remains on whether it will continue to see this amount of progress in such short timeframes in the future. Gemini 2.0 Flash, which is also available on Android devices, promises more advanced image and audio capabilities in a lightweight form, as previously mentioned. It outperforms the fully featured Gemini 1.5 Pro in many key benchmarks, even with its responses being twice as fast. Google is making serious strides quickly, and it’s impressive to watch. Gemini Advanced subscribers get the most advanced features, however, but you’ll have to figure out if it’s worth the price for your own use case.