Google has announced Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, an AI model that combines the speed of Flash technology with chains of thought like OpenAI's o1 model. This new model is available for free to everyone on Google's AI Studio platform.

This free version has a token limit of 32,767 tokens, which is somewhat limited compared to other Gemini models, but what is notable is how fast it handles complex problems that traditional AI models typically stumble upon.

The published demos include examples that require complex thinking, such as riddles and probability problems. The published demos include examples that require complex thinking, such as riddles and probability problems.

However, given that this release is only a few hours old, it is again an impressive demonstration of what DeepMind's AI architecture can offer.

One important difference from the OpenAI approach is the fact that Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking displays inferences as they are, whereas o1 is much more shy and hides its thinking. This is an important difference for those who need to follow a very long chain of thoughts to avoid hallucinations.

The new model has already leaped to first place in the Lmarena chatbot arena. In such a short period of time, this is an eye-opening result for this new model: when we tested Flash Thinking on a riddle cheekily culled from the OpenAI community's 50 Really Hard Riddles web page, it came up with the answer in 9.2 seconds. This is not a test that proves anything meaningful, but it is a pretty decent example of how capable this model is.

Another major difference between Google's new inference model and OpenAI is that Google AI Studio allows you to adjust safety settings to check different responses. For example, you can adjust for harassment, hate, dangerous, and explicit content and see how those changes affect the inference capabilities of the model.

It is still too early to make definite statements one way or the other about this new model. However, the first indications are that Google has once again stepped up to the plate and has successfully proven its core AI technology and capabilities.

Those who want to try out the new model for free can sign up for Google's AI Studio platform and select from the model box in the right sidebar.