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Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork

qwen.ai

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Re: Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork

#21

“self-evolves through feedback loops” Does this mean they distilled Claude? Sounds like what Claude Code will often do.

It's meaningless. Models have always been able to do this and this capability is strengthened during RL since being able to explore the solution space to figure something out will give it a reward.

What is important is how long it can go without requiring human intervention. Not just that it's possible to run on its own for a time.

Re: Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork

#22
post #7
post #4

Lmao I love their video with the idea that people will be able to do their hobbies while ai does their job. Surely Alibaba is leading by example here by reducing work hours per week while keeping pay the same right? Right?

That's the thing. Wny are companies like OpenAI/Anthropic/Alibaba/Kimi/Deepseek still hiring SWEs if their models have become so good?

I mean its pretty obvious right? This models are not flawless and sometimes reach stupid conclusions so there needs to be some one who watches it. Thought i must say u are right. Every one of them pretends that this new model is gonna finally take ur jobs lol

Re: Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork

#23
post #7
post #4

Lmao I love their video with the idea that people will be able to do their hobbies while ai does their job. Surely Alibaba is leading by example here by reducing work hours per week while keeping pay the same right? Right?

That's the thing. Wny are companies like OpenAI/Anthropic/Alibaba/Kimi/Deepseek still hiring SWEs if their models have become so good?

There's infinite work to be done, so higher productivity makes people worth more. (Obviously this doesn't apply if AI can do everything but we're not there yet.)

Re: Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork

#25
post #7
post #4

Lmao I love their video with the idea that people will be able to do their hobbies while ai does their job. Surely Alibaba is leading by example here by reducing work hours per week while keeping pay the same right? Right?

That's the thing. Wny are companies like OpenAI/Anthropic/Alibaba/Kimi/Deepseek still hiring SWEs if their models have become so good?

The models are good even by skeptics standard, it's just that evangelists are overselling the capabilities. If you understand the limits of LLMs not using them as a business is shooting yourself in the foot.

However, they are not at the point where they can effectively train themselves, nor did they are capable of researching their own method of learning. SWEs in mid-corps on my country are right now relegated to reviews and sanity check, basically babysitting the LLMs and making sure they're not spouting nonsense. If you think about it, that's basically QA and can also be delegated to another AI. If Bun's rust rewrite that they tout as fully LLM-led can pass the test of time in a year or so I think that's it.

I believe all that is now constrained by compute and capital, not tech.

Re: Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork

#26

They've also announced Qwen3.8-27B being released open-weight next week. Qwen3.6-27B is widely regarded as one of the best local models, especially since nothing else comes close to it, that isn't benchmaxxed, without being significantly larger. If 3.8 truly improves upon it that would be awesome.

This is what I've been waiting for. We are still using fine-tuned deployments of Qwen3.6-27B with a lot of success but could use a bump in intelligence. Here's hoping.

Re: Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork

#27

They've also announced Qwen3.8-27B being released open-weight next week. Qwen3.6-27B is widely regarded as one of the best local models, especially since nothing else comes close to it, that isn't benchmaxxed, without being significantly larger. If 3.8 truly improves upon it that would be awesome.

Qwen3.6-35B is my daily driver for AI, and what convinced me to cancel my Claude subscription back in April. The Qwen3.6 line is easily the best local model I've tried, and I've tried a lot. I've got it diligently grinding away on my laptop right now, reviewing and fixing some bugs in my F# code.

Re: Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork

#28
post #7
post #4

Lmao I love their video with the idea that people will be able to do their hobbies while ai does their job. Surely Alibaba is leading by example here by reducing work hours per week while keeping pay the same right? Right?

That's the thing. Wny are companies like OpenAI/Anthropic/Alibaba/Kimi/Deepseek still hiring SWEs if their models have become so good?

[deleted]

Re: Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork

#29
post #5

> Today, we are officially releasing Qwen 3.8-Max, the most capable model in the Qwen family to date. This also marks the first time we will open-source the weights of a Qwen-Max-class model — the open weights will be released next week. I don't understand. That's dated today, but: https://twitter.com/alibaba_qwen/status/2078759124914098291 > Qwen3.8 is launching and going open-weight soon! [...] You don't have to wa…

... other comments were right, this is the full qwen3.8-max model, two weeks ago was the qwen3.8-max-preview release.

Here's a pelican I just got out of the new model. It took 11 minutes and forgot the wheels! https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer#url=ht... (scroll to bottom)

The reasoning trace is pretty great:

> More additions: basket with fish in it? Cute detail — a fish poking out of a basket on the handlebars! This adds charm and pelican context.

If the price is $2/$6 that cost me 17 cents: https://www.llm-prices.com/#it=90&ot=29734&ic=2&oc=6

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