The trick: Narrowed Superlative
Gemini 4 Carbon is #1 on Artificial Analysis, says Google, and the tester agrees.
It leads 4 of the index's 9 tests, and most readers cannot use it yet.
Gemini 4 Carbon ranks #1 on Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5.
Before you read on. Your call?
TRUE, BUT
4 of 9
Artificial Analysis confirms the #1 at 59, with the top score in 4 of its 9 evaluations.
The twist
It does not lead coding or knowledge work, Google puts it #4 on WebDev Arena, and it is rolled out only to selected users at an introductory price half the standard rate.
There’s more to this story.
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The trick has a name
We call it Narrowed Superlative: first or fastest, inside a quietly narrowed category. You'll see it again. Learn to spot it →
Receipts
- Supports blog.google:
Carbon ranks #1 on the recently updated v5.0 of Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 59.
- Supports artificialanalysis.ai:
Gemini 4 Carbon leads the Intelligence Index v5, with the #1 score in 4 of the 9 Index evaluations
- Context artificialanalysis.ai:
Carbon makes substantial gains elsewhere but is not leading in coding and knowledge work
- Context blog.google:
Carbon jumps +89 elo points to land at #4 (1768) on WebDev Arena
- Context blog.google:
Starting this week, we will make Carbon available to a subset of cyber defenders
- Refutes artificialanalysis.ai:
Gemini 4 Carbon is being rolled out to selected users and is not yet publicly available.
- Context blog.google:
at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens
- Context blog.google:
After the introductory period expires, the price of $4 per 1M input tokens and $20 per 1M output tokens will apply.
- Context artificialanalysis.ai:
All our charts and figures use standard pricing for both Gemini 4 Carbon and Argon.
- Context artificialanalysis.ai:
On average, it costs $7.76 per task to evaluate Gemini 4 Carbon (High) on the Intelligence Index.
- Context artificialanalysis.ai:
somewhat expensive when comparing to other models of similar price. It's also faster than average, however very verbose.
- Context news.ycombinator.com:
Gemini 4 Carbon | Hacker News
Open the Receipts Pack → What each source proves, every figure traced, and what would change our verdict.
