Best Small Language Models for ZenMux

Ling 3.0 Tiny is a reasoning model featuring open weights, comprising 7.9 billion total parameters and 1.3 billion active parameters, alongside a substantial context window of 262,000 tokens. Leveraging a mixture-of-experts architecture, it pushes the boundaries of the open-weights Pareto frontier in terms of intelligence relative to active parameters, while being compact enough for local deployment in various environments. Scoring 25 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, it stands on par with gpt-oss-120b, which scores 24, despite utilizing 15 times fewer total parameters and 4 times fewer active parameters. This impressive parameter efficiency does come with a trade-off, as it requires a significant 213 million output tokens to complete the Intelligence Index evaluation. In addition, Ling 3.0 Tiny exhibits noteworthy advancements in reducing hallucination tendencies compared to Ling-mini-2.0; it enhances its AA-Omniscience score by 59 points while keeping accuracy levels consistent. Notably, rather than making random guesses in uncertain situations, the model chose to attempt only 37% of the questions during evaluation, leading to a markedly reduced hallucination rate of 30%, a significant improvement over the previous generation's 96%. This strategic approach not only demonstrates the model's improved reasoning capabilities but also highlights its potential for more reliable real-world applications.