Where is actually no benefit or real difference according to the php manuel:

There are four different pairs of opening and closing tags which can be used in PHP. Two of those, <?php ?> and <script >language="php"> </script>, are always available.

Actually it's better to use <?php ?> instead of the <script> tag, because this <?php?> is common and its supported by all environments and IDEs. For example phpstorm doesn't support the script tag.

And you should also use the <?php?> alternative to avoid confusion.

The reason you've heard about this in the past couple days is because there's actually an RFC to remove them entirely from the language.

As such, it's probably not a good idea to use the nonstandard opening tags when there's a very high possibility that they will be gone in the next release.