alt Hacker NewsOne thing seems for certain is that OpenAI models hold a distinct lead in academics over Anthropic and Google models.
For those in academics, is OpenAI the vendor of choice?
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Hasn't AlphaFold been used to make real discoveries for a few years now?
I think the mathematicians on X are all using GPT 5.5 Pro
From my limited testing, Gemini can dig out hard to find information given you detail your prompt enough.
Given that Google is the "web indexing company", finding hard to find things is natural for their models, and this is the only way I need these models for.
If I can't find it for a week digging the internet, I give it a colossal prompt, and it digs out what I'm looking for.
Gemini seems better trained for learning and I think Google has made a more deliberate effort to optimize for pedagoical best practices. (E.g. tutoring, formative feedback, cognitive load optimization)
As far as academic research is concerned (e.g. this threads topic), I can't say.
A simpler explanation is that more people are using ChatGPT
OpenAI models seem to have been trained on a lot of auto-generated theorem proving data; GPT 5.5 is really good at writing Lean.
OpenAI specifically targeted Academia a lot and gave out a lot of free/unlimited usage to top academics and universities/researchers.
They also offer grants you can apply for as a researcher. I'm sure other labs may have this too but I believe OpenAI was first to this.