Peter Smith
⬤ Here's something wild: new analysis from lmarena.ai looked at how long AI models actually stay at the top of public leaderboards once they hit that #1 spot. They checked out every leading model since mid-2023, starting from when GPT-4 was running the show. What they found basically shows the whole AI game is moving faster than ever.
⬤ The numbers tell the story pretty clearly – these days, the average top model only holds onto that #1 position for about 35 days. After that? Most models drop out of the top five within five months and fall completely out of the top ten in around seven months. That's a massive change from how things used to work, when top models could stay dominant way longer.
⬤ What's really eye-opening is seeing how far former champions have fallen. Models that used to be absolute state-of-the-art are now buried in the rankings. Take o1, for example – it's sitting at #56 now. Claude 3 Opus? Down at #139. That kind of drop shows you just how fast these improvements in training, architecture, and reasoning are completely changing the game.
⬤ We're looking at an AI world where things are moving incredibly fast and staying on top is basically a temporary gig now. As models keep getting better and competition gets more intense, holding that top spot is tougher than ever. If this trend keeps going, we're probably going to see even shorter dominance cycles as we move deeper into 2026.
Peter Smith
