First Principles of Model Routing

https://try.works/first-principles-of-model-routing

by try-working • 20 days ago

52 16 20 days ago

aeon_ai2• 15 days ago

On it's face, there is useful content here. But it's also clearly contextual.

It's absolutely the case that routing between frontier models can improve results, mainly because of the alloying effect. Ping ponging between different providers gives the task exposure to different data distributions, and can break models out of non-optimal feedback loops.

That's not to say that's always the right approach, just not clearly wrong. And a small pool does not necessarily 'improve' model routing. The real advice is just 'know why you're routing to each model'.

Especially with guidance to map to improve based on performance - with a large enough volume of tasks/requests, you'd want to maximize the initial pool size to expand the search space in order to determine which is best at each task.

I read this as "here are some thoughts on model routing" -- not first principles I'd advise everyone to live by.

try-working7• 15 days ago

If we define GPT 5.5 and Opus 4.8 as the frontier models for simplicity, there is some value in routing between them theoretically because two models will always have some differences.

However, when the models have the same generalist profile capabilities and are at the same performance and cost tier, making a decision for when to route between them and also making sure that that decision is correct, requires enormously granular information. While there are benchmarks that show differences between the models across different domains and tasks, the differences are generally not major and we also cannot assume that benchmarks that we know are optimized for, because if the new model wasn't presented together with good benchmarks the business would tank, really reflect real-world task performance at the request-level.

So routing between similar models is an information problem that is unlikely to be solved.

Routing between these two models is also likely to have a lower benefit than routing between GPT and DeepSeek on the cost vector. Routing to DS has clear, known and verifiable impact on cost. There is no need to guess.

Similarly, if we routed between GPT and a specialized math model, lets say Leanstral, that we can assume outperforms GPT by >50%, the benefits are also massively larger, and the routing decisions are also easy to make.

This is why the biggest pay offs come from routing between models that have a 2-10x difference in one of the cost-speed-quality factors, or specialized in a specific domain, or runs locally for data-security sensitive work.

try-working7• 15 days ago

I can add to the above that an accurate model router is what enables specialist models, and specialist models is what will in turn make model routing common place.

When we have a standard model routing protocol in place used by both applications and providers, we can start to really reap immense benefits from accurate routing and fine-tuned specialist models resulting in better performance and lower cost.

handfuloflight3• 15 days ago

Why have you put all the content on the right column like this on desktop.

try-working7• 15 days ago

it's arty

handfuloflight3• 15 days ago

It's what someone who's trying to be "artsy" thinks "artsy" is. I'm not straining to read it.

aua• 15 days ago

i like it :)

antonvs• 15 days ago

Because CSS is more difficult than machine learning, apparently.

iot_devs• 15 days ago

I am afraid that this post is missing the biggest point.

Given a prompt (or task) how do I evaluate if it is a "simple" task that should be executed by a small model or if it is a complex one that may need a SOTA model?

Are you guys using heuristics? Which one?

try-working7• 15 days ago

Feel free to take a look at the docs for how routing decisions are made: https://role-model.dev/

When you use Pi with pi-role-model, Pi will include task and role metadata with its request; the role-model router runtime additionally holds benchmark and observability data, and a configured routing strategy. A composite of this is used to make the decision.

What you are pointing out is correct: making the actual decision and ensuring it is accurate can be difficult, which is why you need rich data as above, and also a model pool where each model is distinct, as I wrote in this post and in one of the comments below.

First Principles of Model Routing

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