Routers Are a New AI Primitive

Every few months, frontier models unlock harder problems and new domains. No company can afford to sit that out, but few can afford frontier prices on every request. Which model should handle each piece of work, and when does the performance of frontier models justify their cost? At Vals, we evaluate models from across the major labs on their ability to carry out complex work across domains such as finance, software engineering, law, and tax. The Vals Index brings these evaluations together to measure AI’s potential economic impact. From that vantage point, the frontier is jagged: five different models hold the top spots on the Index’s eight benchmarks, and no model ranks in the top three on all of them. Choosing only one model means compromising performance on some tasks. On real work, the frontier is jagged The five models that hold the top spots on the Index’s eight benchmarks, and their rank on each, out of 48 models. The five models that hold the top spots on the Index’s eight benchmarks, and their rank on each, out of…