Lesson 905 of 1596
Reasoning Models (o-series, Claude Extended Thinking, Gemini Deep Think): When the Extra Tokens Are Worth It
When to spend 10x the tokens on a reasoning model — and when a normal model is fine.
Creators · Model Families · ~24 min read
The premise
Reasoning models trade cost and latency for accuracy on hard problems — they are wasted on easy ones and indispensable on a narrow class.
What AI does well here
- Solve multi-step math and logic problems beyond standard models
- Plan long agentic tasks before executing
- Catch their own errors via internal critique
- Outperform standard models on competition-style problems
What AI cannot do
- Justify their cost on simple classification or extraction
- Stay fast — expect 5-30s latency vs. 1-2s
- Replace tool use for tasks needing external knowledge
Key terms in this lesson
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