intelligence-radar/compendium/03-frontier-as-of-2026-09.md
tegwick d0e6438609 Integrate founding explorations and bootstrap operational radar
Assistant: codex
Assistant-Model: gpt-6-astra
Assistant-Session: 01a09c77-b1a9-7eb3-b501-6cb24b458c97
2026-09-13 22:42:09 +02:00

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Imported exploration, 2026-09-13. Source claims have not been independently verified by this repository. See integration review.

Artificial capability frontier — snapshot 13 September 2026

This is a dated reading, assembled from public leaderboards and lab announcements. Independent aggregators disagree. Treat ranks as a cloud, not a podium.

What “frontier” means here

A model is frontier-class if it is inside the current top cluster on at least one of: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (current version), Epoch ECI, a hard agentic coding/computer-use board, or a hard science/math board — and it is a product someone can actually call or download.

Peak-score models that are invitation-only or unreleased (e.g. some Mythos-class preview lanes) are frontier-adjacent, not generally usable Frontier.

Cluster as of this week

Rough usable cluster (not a single official ranking):

Role this week Model Lab Notes
Joint intelligence-index lead (AA v4.3, max effort) Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra Anthropic / OpenAI Tied at 53 on AA Intelligence Index v4.3 after the 4–7 Sep rebase
Strong general / coding workhorse at mid price Claude Opus 5 Anthropic Same $5/$25 list as older Opus; SWE-bench Verified ~96, Pro ~79.2 (lab-reported)
Previous OpenAI flagship still widely deployed GPT-5.6 Sol / Terra / Luna OpenAI Sol remains a reference; Terra often the efficiency pick inside the family
Cheap multimodal workhorse Gemini 3.8 Flash Google GA 2 Sep; Gemini 3.5 Pro still not generally shipped
Real-time / long-horizon value hosted model Grok 4.6 xAI Current xAI flagship; Grok 4.7 rumored, not shipped as of 13 Sep
Closed Meta line Muse Spark 1.3 Meta Superintelligence Labs Low list price vs US lab peers on some boards
Leading open / exportable cluster Kimi K3, Qwen3.8-Max, DeepSeek V4.x (V4-Pro and V4.1 Flash), GLM-5.3 Moonshot, Alibaba, DeepSeek, Z.ai Open or semi-open paths; distillation and export-control fights are political facts

Headline capability claims to verify, not swallow: GPT-6 Astra’s ARC-AGI-3 number is wrapper-sensitive (public reports of ~63% on ARC Prize harness vs 99.9% on a provider adapter). That gap is itself an Intelligence Radar finding: the harness is part of the model.

Economics and availability (the other half of the frontier)

  • Price span among near-frontier models is two orders of magnitude on blended $/M tokens and still large on cost per completed hard task.
  • Token cost ≠ task cost. Reasoning models that emit fewer hidden tokens can beat a cheaper list price.
  • Capacity is a constraint. Mid-September reporting: OpenAI paused some $200 ChatGPT Pro signups/upgrades amid Astra demand. A sold-out Frontier is not an available Frontier.
  • Access tiers matter: Fable 5.1 general vs Mythos 5.1 restricted; Astra first to cybersecurity “Daybreak” customers then broader; some Chinese weights are legally or practically unavailable in parts of the West.
  • Hardware sovereignty is now a first-class story (DeepSeek training paths on non-NVIDIA stacks; EU/US compute buildout; export controls).

Detailed prices live in ../frontier/ledger-2026-09.md and will drift. Re-check before any buying decision.

What moved this month (for the weekly series)

  • 1 Sep — Claude Fable 5.1 / Mythos 5.1
  • 2 Sep — Gemini 3.8 Flash; Muse Spark 1.3
  • 3 Sep — GPT-6 Astra
  • 4–7 Sep — Artificial Analysis Index v4.2 then v4.3 rebase (harder terminal bench + AutomationBench-AA)
  • 10 Sep — DeepSeek V4.1 Flash; Cognition SWE-2 (near-frontier coding at lower cost)
  • Ongoing — Grok 4.7 slip; Gemini 3.5 Pro still unshipped; policy noise in Washington and Beijing

Changelog

  • 2026-09-13: v0.1 snapshot.