From BERT to Frontier Agents: Eight Years of Language-Model Progress, the Collapse of the Capability-Cost Curve, and the Rise of Task-Targeted Models

Excerpt

arXiv:2608.13675v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Between October 2018 and July 2026 AI models progressed from simple systems like BERT to massive agents that solve complex math and write software. The ability to resolve real coding issues improved by nearly six times per year since late 2024. During this time costs dropped sharply with OpenAIs budget model GPT 5 point 6 Luna matching flagship capabilities for just one to six dollars per million tokens beating older versions at a fraction of the