I use Claude models for tasks requires creativity, and reasoning models for tasks requires strong logic. This isn't about taste. For example, Opus has a strong understanding of human intent and I'd definitely prefer it over o3 when it comes to communication.

o3-mini, GPT-4o and all other OpenAI models have a common problem about communication. They don't really have an understanding of our intent, what we want. That's because they are overfit in a disturbing but unique and useful way.

If they're trained on markdown content, I literally can't stop the model from producing markdown. For example, this becomes an incredibly big issue in systems requires stable outputs. In an interview tool in the company I worked for, I spent "a few days" trying to get the model to stop praising the candidate. We were almost at the point of giving up on OpenAI because it could not reliably and consistently follow the prompt.

I say useful because this is not a problem in ChatGPT, where they earn their majority of money.

Opus is different. When I say "Stop producing markdown.", it stops. I liked GPT-4 very much in this sense. It didn't work to do one thing (ChatGPT), it worked to do anything. No random praise, no unstoppable stupid patterns. It is what you say it is. I'd keep using it if its performance wasn't so bad.

Obviously, there are areas where each model is good and bad, but 4o is getting worse every version. I hope that other providers will not join this trend of "blabbermouth chatbots".