Car Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"
Summary
The article presents a car-wash reasoning benchmark across 53 AI models, revealing that most models default to a 'walk' answer due to short-distance heuristics, with only a handful showing reliable 'drive' reasoning across repeated runs. It discusses human baseline results, the instability of many models in production, and promotes context engineering as a method to improve reliability and reduce costs. The piece provides methodology, notable findings, and data references for further exploration.