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I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it

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Re: I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it

#11
post #9

My own experience is that Opus 4.8 has an adversarial-teacher voice, unsolicited grading as if I submitted an essay for grading, declarations about the "real" issue, and constant "honest notes" self grading its own responses even before it answers. I can't stand its tone. We can't have a normal chat. While Fable reverts to Opus for simple questions like "What is digestion?"

Same, I was just fighting it as it accused me over and over again of Ctrl+Cing a process that clearly errored out. 3 turns for it to find why the shell script actually crashed.

Re: I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it

#13
post #9

My own experience is that Opus 4.8 has an adversarial-teacher voice, unsolicited grading as if I submitted an essay for grading, declarations about the "real" issue, and constant "honest notes" self grading its own responses even before it answers. I can't stand its tone. We can't have a normal chat. While Fable reverts to Opus for simple questions like "What is digestion?"

For chatting and getting informations, and be corrected on things you're wrong without being reprimended by your own tool, GPT 5.5/5.6 is way better. Gemini 3.1 pro is surprisingly good at verifying your stuff, even though it's always making mistakes about its own stuff (don't ask him question, but ask him to verify your answer to the question).

Same for graphics, visual consistency, anything around the "does the look make sense and is pleasing" really, which makes claude design such a (good) surprise, I hope very hard for a Codex equivalent. And Gemini "gets" graphics.

Claude is definitely a code and cowork tool first, that's where it shines.

Re: I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it

#14
But this is what all the tech bros wanted right? Spending 2025 panicking about sycophancy[1] and how GPT-4o needed to be shut down ASAP meant that 2026 models would be prone to thinking they know Better Than You. That was the germ of the sycophancy panic, the idea that there is a Truth that the GPUs know better than the user.

[1] HN thread on my post in January https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46488396

Re: I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it

#15
post #10

It's quite obnoxious. I asked if brown rice left in the fridge for a couple days–originally put in for use in fried rices–was still safe. Fable decided I'm trying to produce biotoxins. Which, ironically, prompted me to learn how to produce Bacillus cereus at home [1]. I paid for a year but am going back to Kagi's multi-model system [2]. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7913059/ Don't Do It [2] https://ass…

"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." (he, in this case, would not be the llm but the people over it) I find those kind of limitation very dystopian and way more dangerous than the threat they claim to fight against.

Businesses are usually allowed to refuse service: "Sorry, we're closed" or "sir, this is a Wendy's." There's nothing dystopian about that.

But it's a rather annoying service if the customer can't predict in advance what sort of tasks they're willing to take on. You should have some idea about what they're normally willing to do for you.

Re: I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it

#16
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." (he, in this case, would not be the llm but the people over it) I find those kind of limitation very dystopian and way more dangerous than the threat they claim to fight against.

Businesses are usually allowed to refuse service: "Sorry, we're closed" or "sir, this is a Wendy's." There's nothing dystopian about that. But it's a rather annoying service if the customer can't predict in advance what sort of tasks they're willing to take on. You should have some idea about what they're normally willing to do for you.

I do not disagree with business deciding to only provide the service they want, I am not talking about the AI business themselves, I am thinking about the people who think we should remove pages from knowledge book.

Whether the book takes the form of an llm or an online website or a printed book is merely implementation details.

Re: I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it

#17

Sol is really good

Apart from the 'Approve for me' in Codex where it has massively regressed.

With GPT 5.5 it never got in the way.

Now it's infuriatingly deciding to reject the most basic actions used hundreds of times before. It just gave me this gem:

> The push to GitLab was blocked because the repository's privacy status couldn't be confirmed. Since the code is private, do you explicitly authorize pushing it to the configured origin on gitlab.com, so the merge request can be opened?

This is not a new project, and Codex has opened a hundred merge requests without issue before.

Re: I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it

#18
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." (he, in this case, would not be the llm but the people over it) I find those kind of limitation very dystopian and way more dangerous than the threat they claim to fight against.

Businesses are usually allowed to refuse service: "Sorry, we're closed" or "sir, this is a Wendy's." There's nothing dystopian about that. But it's a rather annoying service if the customer can't predict in advance what sort of tasks they're willing to take on. You should have some idea about what they're normally willing to do for you.

I think no one objects to the refusals in the abstract but rather to the inconsistencies and the presentation. You don't know what request might be refused or downgraded. You do know that the marketing copy and CEO's words present it as being for your own good (or the good of society) instead of plainly stated as a business policy based on business or personal concerns. These aspects are what make it grating and yes, potentially dystopian.

Re: I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it

#19
I hate it. A useful tip - Claude goes into what I call Safety Mode when it gets afraid of risk. Once it's in that mode, you will never get out and it lobotomizes its effective intelligence. As soon as Claude sends a message like this, use the "edit message" feature in the chat UI to try again and avoid Safety Mode rather than trying to convince it or redirect it out by continuing the conversation.

Re: I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it

#20
post #9

My own experience is that Opus 4.8 has an adversarial-teacher voice, unsolicited grading as if I submitted an essay for grading, declarations about the "real" issue, and constant "honest notes" self grading its own responses even before it answers. I can't stand its tone. We can't have a normal chat. While Fable reverts to Opus for simple questions like "What is digestion?"

what i dislike more with opus 4.8 is that i can get a straightforward plan, and it just stops after the first 5% to wait for another message, and if i set a goal/ralph loop or anything for it to keep going through the plan, it cancels the loop and proclaims conpletion when its barely started
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