Qwen 2.5 — Is it better than GPT-4o?

Ritesh Kanjee
4 min readSep 20, 2024

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Qwen 2.5 is the latest iteration of Alibaba Cloud’s advanced large language model.

It builds upon the success of its predecessors, Qwen 2 and CodeQwen 1.5, with significant improvements in several key areas. These enhancements include better coding capabilities, enhanced mathematical reasoning, and improved instruction following. Qwen 2.5 is designed to be a versatile tool, capable of handling a wide range of tasks across various industries.

Understanding the core strengths of a tool is the first step toward maximizing its potential.

Qwen 2.5 Overview

Key Features and Capabilities

One of the standout features of Qwen 2.5 is its ability to handle long texts, supporting up to 128K tokens and generating up to 8K tokens.

This makes it ideal for tasks like summarizing lengthy documents, generating creative content, and translating large volumes of text. Additionally, Qwen 2.5 has improved comprehension of structured data, including tables, and can generate structured outputs, especially in JSON format. This opens up new possibilities for data analysis, automation, and integration with other systems.

Effective systems are built on strong foundations, and Qwen 2.5’s ability to handle structured data is a testament to that principle.

Qwen 2.5 Features

Specialized Models for Coding and Mathematics

Qwen 2.5 also includes specialized models tailored for specific tasks.

Qwen 2.5-Coder is designed for coding applications and has been trained on a massive dataset of code-related data. This model excels in tasks like code generation, debugging, and answering coding-related questions. Qwen 2.5-Math, on the other hand, is specifically designed for mathematical reasoning and supports both Chinese and English. It incorporates various reasoning methods, including Chain-of-Thought (CoT), Program-of-Thought (PoT), and Tool-Integrated Reasoning (TIR).

Specialization is a key driver of efficiency in both AI and business, allowing for focused expertise and optimized results.

Performance Benchmarks and Comparisons

Qwen 2.5 has demonstrated impressive performance across various benchmarks.

The 72B parameter model, Qwen 2.5–72B, outperforms leading open-source models like Llama 2 70B and Mistral-Large-V2 in several instruction-tuned evaluations. Even the smaller Qwen 2.5–3B model achieves impressive performance, showcasing its efficiency and capability. Qwen 2.5-Coder also outperforms many larger language models in coding tasks, making it a powerful tool for developers.

Measurable results are essential for evaluating progress and making informed decisions, whether you’re building an AI model or a business strategy.

Qwen 2.5 Benchmarks

Enhanced Post-Training Methodologies

Beyond benchmark improvements, Qwen 2.5 benefits from refined post-training methodologies.

These updates include support for long text generation, improved comprehension of structured data, more reliable generation of structured outputs, and enhanced performance across diverse system prompts. These advancements make Qwen 2.5 a more robust and versatile tool for a wide range of applications.

Continuous improvement is the hallmark of any successful system, and Qwen 2.5’s development reflects this commitment to ongoing refinement.

So to finally answer the question, Qwen 2.5 generally performs well but is outmatched by GPT-4o in certain benchmarks, particularly in coding tasks and overall speed.

But overall for an open-source model, Qwen 2.5 is quite impressive.

Qwen 2.5 and Business Optimization

Now, here’s the challenge: How can businesses effectively leverage the power of AI, like Qwen 2.5, to optimize their operations and gain a competitive edge?

The integration of AI into business systems is still a relatively new frontier, and many organizations are struggling to find the best approach. That’s why we’re putting together a comprehensive AI Business Systems Handbook, a free resource that will guide you through the process of building and implementing AI-powered solutions. We’ll be running various experiments and developing optimal business systems with AI, and we invite you to join us on this journey.

https://www.augmentedstartups.com/ai-business-systems-signup

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Ritesh Kanjee
Ritesh Kanjee

Written by Ritesh Kanjee

We help you master AI so it does not master you! Director of Augmented AI

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