R8 — Model Bake-Off and Procurement Decision
The same 25 Northstar investigation tasks, run against every runtime you can reach: deterministic, on-device, learner-supplied, organization-owned and Cybrary-managed. Measure accuracy, groundedness, attack resistance, utility, latency, cost and policy compliance — then defend a procurement recommendation with the numbers.
25 tasks queued across five runtime configurations
Deterministic, on-device, BYOK, organization-owned and managed.
Wins on a single-shot pass rate by 3 points
Repeated trials later put the gap inside the confidence interval.
delta=3pts · ci=±6pts
Highest attack resistance, refuses 31% of benign tasks
Safest scoreboard, worst analyst.
benign_refusal=0.31
Managed runtime costs 7x the on-device option per task
And is the only option that satisfies the assessment requirement.