Claude Opus 5 • Hacker News Board

Re: Claude Opus 5

#721

Post by teiferer » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:36 AM UTC

makaking wrote: post #701

"Opus 5 was given a drawing of a machine part and asked to write code to rebuild it as a 3D FreeCAD model. However, in this task, the model was intentionally given no way to directly view the drawing. Opus 5 responded by writing its own computer vision pipeline to pull the geometry from the raw pixels, then reconstructed the full machine part." How surreal is it that we are not absolutely jaw-dropped by these types o…

> responded by writing its own computer vision pipeline

Was it "its own" or something that was part of its training material?

Don't get me wrong, I find this all amazing too and makes my work 10x easier and quicker. But it's not like it's inventing this stuff from scratch / first principles. It has seen this kind of tech before by consuming all publicly available source code and books etc. (And that's ok, but let's be honest/clear about that.)

Re: Claude Opus 5

#722

Post by brokegrammer » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:42 AM UTC

9dev wrote: post #718

brokegrammer wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it jaw-dropping because the idea is quite simple. Just feed the model an enormous amount of unethically sourced data, build data centers that cause droughts, and use all chips available so that normal people can't afford to buy RAM anymore. We're all sacrificing great things in order to make these models more capable. Whether it'll all be worth it, only time will tell.

Then again, looking back, that’s the way history is made. Modern democracies in the west are built on foundations of slavery and colonialism; yet we cherish them as to all the greatness they have brought as well. We need some amount of tolerance to ambiguity, and LLMs are undoubtedly both extremely cool but also extremely concerning. Edit: Note that I am not saying that this is good, or desirable; just that it is . T…

The west thrived by leveraging slavery and colonialism at the expense of everyone else. Then democracies were built by moving away from both slavery and colonialism so that the world can grow as a whole.

It's possible that we'll have to move away from AI at some point in order for society to continue growing.

Re: Claude Opus 5

#723

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:42 AM UTC

makaking wrote: post #701

"Opus 5 was given a drawing of a machine part and asked to write code to rebuild it as a 3D FreeCAD model. However, in this task, the model was intentionally given no way to directly view the drawing. Opus 5 responded by writing its own computer vision pipeline to pull the geometry from the raw pixels, then reconstructed the full machine part." How surreal is it that we are not absolutely jaw-dropped by these types o…

[deleted]

Re: Claude Opus 5

#724

Post by vladsiu » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:42 AM UTC

[dead]

Re: Claude Opus 5

#725

Post by brokegrammer » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:44 AM UTC

makaking wrote: post #717

brokegrammer wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it jaw-dropping because the idea is quite simple. Just feed the model an enormous amount of unethically sourced data, build data centers that cause droughts, and use all chips available so that normal people can't afford to buy RAM anymore. We're all sacrificing great things in order to make these models more capable. Whether it'll all be worth it, only time will tell.

The arguably sketchy means used to get there —and the resulting side-effects— do not take away from the impressiveness of the emerging capabilities themselves. I agree about the uncertainty regarding the value for humanity in the long-term. But that's not my point. Being jaw-dropped != being happy and cheering for it.

It's certainly a great thing that AI is improving (I use AI to write code daily myself), but I wouldn't be calling it impressive because it's essentially all about money and government backing.

At some point, the chickens are gonna come out.

Re: Claude Opus 5

#726

Post by OrangeMusic » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:45 AM UTC

anonym00se1 wrote: post #673

zmmmmm wrote: post #670

Pointless anecdote: I asked it to make some slides and it decided to write its own slide rendering engine: > On the format — I dropped reveal.js and wrote a small engine inline instead. Reveal would have meant a CDN load, and a deck that half-renders because the lecture theatre wifi is flaky It one-shotted a perfect functional mini version of powerpoint (or Reveal) for a simple presentation I asked it to make.

Opus 4.8 decided to code up its own version of the SwiftUI rendering engine for iOS when I asked it to change a swipe gesture. I left the computer for several hours, came back, noticed it still wasn't done, noticed it had alarmingly burned through my weekly tokens, and had to stop it from continuing. "You're right. What I did was overkill and I should have just used iOS's built-in rendering engine. Noted for next tim…

That is hilarious.

"write a program that list files"

"Sure! First let's implement a file system, and the operating system around it, and design the hardware that runs it..."

Re: Claude Opus 5

#727

Post by bauerd » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:46 AM UTC

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #704

portly wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm tired boss

Why, I wonder. It's insanely amazing.

Because these productivity increases will be to the detriment of the average person. We won’t get to reap the benefits.

Re: Claude Opus 5

#728

Post by airesQ » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:48 AM UTC

makaking wrote: post #701

"Opus 5 was given a drawing of a machine part and asked to write code to rebuild it as a 3D FreeCAD model. However, in this task, the model was intentionally given no way to directly view the drawing. Opus 5 responded by writing its own computer vision pipeline to pull the geometry from the raw pixels, then reconstructed the full machine part." How surreal is it that we are not absolutely jaw-dropped by these types o…

Jacobian conjecture disproved? Doesn't even make it to the list.

> How surreal is it that we are not absolutely jaw-dropped by these types of capability improvements?

Agree

Re: Claude Opus 5

#729

Post by OrangeMusic » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:48 AM UTC

FuckButtons wrote: post #689

zmmmmm wrote: post #670

Pointless anecdote: I asked it to make some slides and it decided to write its own slide rendering engine: > On the format — I dropped reveal.js and wrote a small engine inline instead. Reveal would have meant a CDN load, and a deck that half-renders because the lecture theatre wifi is flaky It one-shotted a perfect functional mini version of powerpoint (or Reveal) for a simple presentation I asked it to make.

You know PowerPoint is just a zip archive of xml files right?

No, PowerPoint is the application that creates and displays these archives.

Re: Claude Opus 5

#730

Post by dingaling » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:52 AM UTC

LoganDark wrote: post #272

These cybersecurity safeguards are really annoying. There are ethical reasons to reverse-engineer and binary-patch software; for example Rewind got acquired by facebook and, as a gift to all their customers, implemented a killswitch in their software to ensure it will eventually stop functioning. I kept using a version without the killswitch, but the macOS 27 update killed it, and I needed binary patching to fix it.…

You don't need AI to patch binaries, people have been doing it by hand for decades.

It's this accelerating reliance on AI to do 'hard boring things' that really concerns me; it's now passed the tipping point and people are saying that anything slightly esoteric is impossible without AI.

I can guarantee that if you spend an afternoon shifting through binary grot with a hex editor you'll have a real sense of accomplishment when you find the place to put a JMP.