How Accurate Is GPT-4? ChatGPT's Flagship Model Reviewed

AI Summary: GPT-4 represented a transformational accuracy improvement over GPT-3.5, scoring 86.4% on MMLU, passing the bar exam at the 90th percentile, and dramatically improving coding and reasoning performance. It remains highly capable and is the foundation on which GPT-4o and later models are built. For professional and accuracy-critical work, GPT-4 class models are the appropriate choice. Summary created using 99helpers AI Web Summarizer

GPT-4's release in March 2023 marked a step change in AI capability that genuinely surprised even experts who had been closely tracking AI progress. The model passed the bar exam at the 90th percentile of human test-takers, scored near the top of the USMLE, and demonstrated reasoning capabilities that were categorically different from GPT-3.5. For users asking how accurate is GPT-4, the honest answer is: dramatically more accurate than its predecessor, and still highly capable for most professional tasks.

GPT-4 Benchmark Performance

GPT-4's performance across academic and professional benchmarks was remarkable at launch and remains impressive by any standard:

MMLU: 86.4% (compared to GPT-3.5's ~70%)
Bar Exam: 90th percentile of human test-takers
USMLE: ~75% average score across all parts
SAT Math: 700/800 (approximately 93rd percentile)
GRE Verbal: 169/170 (approximately 99th percentile)
HumanEval (coding): approximately 67-85% depending on evaluation methodology

These numbers represent a model that performs at or above the level of an educated professional on standardized tests across law, medicine, science, and general knowledge. The gap between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 on these benchmarks reflects a qualitative improvement in reasoning depth, not just marginal gains.

Where GPT-4 Accuracy Shines

Complex multi-step reasoning is where GPT-4's accuracy advantage over GPT-3.5 is most pronounced. The model can follow longer logical chains, identify implicit assumptions in arguments, recognize when a question contains misleading framing, and produce nuanced analysis that accounts for multiple perspectives. These capabilities make GPT-4 significantly more reliable for analytical and professional work.

Knowledge breadth and depth improved substantially. GPT-4 is less likely to hallucinate on subjects in its training distribution and more likely to accurately recognize the limits of its knowledge. Its calibration — the alignment between expressed confidence and actual accuracy — is better than GPT-3.5, meaning its hedging language is a more reliable signal.

Medical, legal, and technical domains all benefit from GPT-4's improved reasoning. While still not a substitute for licensed professionals in high-stakes decisions, GPT-4's accuracy in explaining complex domain concepts and reasoning through professional scenarios is genuinely impressive.

GPT-4's Limitations

Despite its improvements, GPT-4 still hallucinates, still makes errors in complex mathematics, and still has a training cutoff that limits its knowledge of recent events. On tasks requiring computation rather than reasoning — precise arithmetic, large-number calculations, statistical operations — GPT-4 benefits from Code Interpreter just as much as GPT-3.5.

For truly novel reasoning challenges — problems that require genuinely creative insight rather than applying learned patterns — GPT-4 still shows limitations that the newer reasoning-optimized models (o1, o3) were designed to address.

GPT-4 vs GPT-4o: Is There a Difference?

GPT-4o (the "omni" model) was released as the successor to GPT-4, adding multimodal capabilities (vision, audio) and improving speed and efficiency while maintaining comparable reasoning quality. For most text-based tasks, GPT-4o and GPT-4 perform similarly, with GPT-4o having the additional capability of processing images and audio. GPT-4o is now the standard model for ChatGPT Plus users.

Verdict

GPT-4 represents the model that brought AI to professional-grade capability. It is highly accurate across most domains and appropriate for professional tasks, though it still requires verification for critical decisions.

Trust Rating: GPT-4 8/10 for general professional tasks, 9/10 for writing and explanation, 6/10 for precision arithmetic and computation without Code Interpreter

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is GPT-4 better than GPT-3.5 for everything?

GPT-4 is better for complex reasoning, factual accuracy, coding, and professional tasks. For simple tasks like basic summarization, email drafting, and casual Q&A, GPT-3.5 often produces acceptable quality at lower cost. The choice depends on whether the accuracy improvement is worth the cost difference for your specific use case.

How accurate is GPT-4 for medical questions?

GPT-4 passed the USMLE with approximately 75% accuracy and performs well on medical knowledge questions. However, it still makes errors in clinical reasoning and should never replace licensed medical professionals for actual patient care decisions. It is appropriate for medical education and concept explanation.

Is GPT-4 still available?

GPT-4 and its variants (GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4o) are available through OpenAI's API and ChatGPT. GPT-4o is now the primary model for ChatGPT Plus users, incorporating the capabilities of GPT-4 with multimodal additions and efficiency improvements.