Models
Frontier model
The most advanced, cutting-edge AI models available at any moment.
Frontier models are the biggest and most capable models at the leading edge of what AI can do. They tend to be the most expensive to build and run, and they are the ones that spark headlines and safety debates. What counts as the frontier keeps moving as new models leapfrog the old.
For example
The flagship models from the top AI labs each year are considered frontier models.
Related
Reasoning modelAn AI that pauses to think through a problem step by step before answering.Mixture of expertsA big model split into specialists, only a few of which handle each question.Open weights vs closedWhether a model's inner settings are shared publicly or kept private.DistillationTraining a small, cheap model to imitate a big, expensive one.