That headline is going to annoy some people, so let me be precise. ChatGPT 5.6 Soul is not dumb. On the hard benchmarks, the ones that measure real long-running professional work across dozens of fields, it just set a new high. It is genuinely brilliant.
What I mean by dumber is that it does not have the big-model feel that something like Fable 5 has, the way a huge pre-trained model reads between the lines and wanders into an idea you never spelled out. And here is the thing: for how I actually work, that trade is worth it. I feed it long, specific prompts, and it reads every edge, does exactly the job, and stays persistent until it is done. Smarter in the benchmark sense is not the same as better for you. The models are becoming different flavors, and the whole game now is picking the one that fits how your brain already works.
I built a tool that tells you which one fits you: https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/p/pick-ai-model-how-you-work?r=1z4sm5&utmcampaign=post&utmmedium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
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Channel: AI News & Strategy Daily | Nate B Jones
Published: 2026-08-02
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMiHRN8pzn4