When Benchmarks Break: Why Bigger Models Keep Winning (and What That Costs You)
Opening — Why this matters now Every few months, a new paper reassures us that bigger is better. Higher scores, broader capabilities, smoother demos. Yet operators quietly notice something else: rising inference bills, brittle behavior off-benchmark, and evaluation metrics that feel increasingly ceremonial. This paper arrives right on schedule—technically rigorous, empirically dense, and unintentionally revealing about where the industry’s incentives now point. ...