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Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

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Re: Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

#61

Post by giancarlostoro »

GPerson wrote: post #43
bentt wrote: post #27

They've put themselves in a corner. Fable was too good and they gave it away with the $20 plan. It had to be a big step from Opus 4.8 to show progress, and Opus 4.8 is GREAT at coding in many different domains. But they're getting killed on token cost. They have to get people paying more for tokens. So then they put Fable in the $200 plan and release Opus 5. I'm suspicious of Opus 5. It is mostly worse than 4.8. It _…

Fable is still on the $100 plan for me. (Maybe this is A/B testing or something.)

I still havent used it much, and they crippled Opus for what feels like no reason. Some suspect that Opus knowing theres a better model degrades it some. Shame.

Re: Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

#62

Post by fxtentacle »

In my opinion, the big issue with Fable is that Claude Code cannot use it properly. I know, that sounds weird, but I've had Fable run down the wrong lane (and never stop) or give up and claim that something was impossible so many times (until I pointed at a GitHub repo that solves the "impossible" issue).

But a while ago, I had access to a Fable harness that just never gives up. And that verifies itself. It burned $100 in API tokens in 15 minutes ... but it succeeded for all the prompts where Fable + Claude had failed.

And I believe that's a real issue for Anthropic. Fable+Claude is not too expensive thanks to the subscription, but Claude severely nerfs Fable. To save money, I guess. Fable API + Custom Harness is a different class, it's so much better. But API tokens are so expensive, you're cheaper off hiring a freelancer.

Re: Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

#63

Post by dlcarrier »

Transformer models are quickly becoming a commodity, and I suspect in time we'll all be running them locally. Even now, you can run something pretty useful on a 16 GB graphics card, and I suspect a decade into the future, entry level hardware will be running better models than high-end graphics cards can run now, as entry-level hardware gets better and models get more efficient.

It doesn't mean hosted frontier models wont exist, they'll just be rare. It's no different than any other commodity market, for example most cars are cheap commodity models, with rare individuals buying expensive luxury cars and businesses buying expensive trucks and specialized equipment.

Re: Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

#64

Post by ikidd »

bentt wrote: post #27

They've put themselves in a corner. Fable was too good and they gave it away with the $20 plan. It had to be a big step from Opus 4.8 to show progress, and Opus 4.8 is GREAT at coding in many different domains. But they're getting killed on token cost. They have to get people paying more for tokens. So then they put Fable in the $200 plan and release Opus 5. I'm suspicious of Opus 5. It is mostly worse than 4.8. It _…

And they've hobble Fable and Opus so hard with their safety guardrails, I ask innocuous questions and tasks and they get flagged so often I gave up on it. I can get all the work I need done in GPT5.5 or 5.6 without the hassle.

I just kept a $20 plan going for use on my phone.

Re: Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

#65

Post by vatsachak »

ieie3366 wrote: post #7

Fable is not a tool for the average user. It’s a professional tool for highly complex work. I would compare it to a extremely high end $15k PC, or an expensive pro-grade video camera, or a freight train, or a … I would say at least 95% of the global population will not encounter a situation once in their life where it would be actually useful/warranted.

I hate to be brusque but this is cope. GPT 5.6 Sol is just as good and cheaper

Re: Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

#66

Post by ericol »

The problem is that they are not solving the problem they ought to be solving.

I don't want Shakespeare, I want Bob the builder.

Half of my work is telling claude how to behave. I'm pretty certain they have enough _data_ to realize people do the same thing time and time again.

Check this comment of mine for a better explanation of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49413353

Re: Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

#67

Post by paulddraper »

hbarka wrote: post #36

Anthropic’s issue is churn because of the peak verbosity vomit coming out of Opus 5/Mythos/Fable. What the hell did they train it on. The sane model is still Opus 4.6.

https://x.com/wolframs91/status/2090159644849353058

What if:

- Opus 4.6 was the last Opus generation that got a lot of use by Anthropic's own employees

- After that they primarily used Mythos internally

- 4.7, 4.8 and 5 were RLAIFd by Mythos "teachers"

- Hence why 4.6 is the last Opus gen who doesn't report back like a robot wanting to cover every potential hole another AI system would've spotted and criticized

- Hence why coding style in Opus 5 also gets criticized, not only behavior in CC

Re: Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

#68

Post by ericol »

ikidd wrote: post #64
bentt wrote: post #27

They've put themselves in a corner. Fable was too good and they gave it away with the $20 plan. It had to be a big step from Opus 4.8 to show progress, and Opus 4.8 is GREAT at coding in many different domains. But they're getting killed on token cost. They have to get people paying more for tokens. So then they put Fable in the $200 plan and release Opus 5. I'm suspicious of Opus 5. It is mostly worse than 4.8. It _…

And they've hobble Fable and Opus so hard with their safety guardrails, I ask innocuous questions and tasks and they get flagged so often I gave up on it. I can get all the work I need done in GPT5.5 or 5.6 without the hassle. I just kept a $20 plan going for use on my phone.

I had Fable bail on me because I used the word autopilot on a project. Changed to something unrelated, and off we went.

Re: Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

#69

Post by krupan »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #50
tcp_handshaker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a $3 trillion bubble riding on this not being true.

The bubble is _not_ on models becoming more intelligent and solving arc-agi-999. They are already good enough at what they mechanically are. You have to use the right harness, right verifiers (automatic where possible, human where not), etc much much more specific than a generic one like claude code or codex, and it will also be able to work within constraints and be the "proposer" of an imaginary optimisation proble…

The bubble is based on the promise that these LLMs will cure cancer and find the solution to global warming. The pragmatic users of these tools (like you seem to be) are enjoying the subsidized use of the tools right now, but it's not a sustainable business model

Re: Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

#70

Post by markbao »

I’m not sure if the underlying data is counting subscription use for Fable, which is where a lot of people are using it because token pricing is very expensive. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was counting enterprise token usage only. As rich as enterprise customers are, they’re not exactly willing to double the cost of SWE salaries on tokens.

Either way, a model used to solve the top 10% of problems that people use AI to solve for, being used 10% of the time … seems like it’s in a decent place.

I find Fable indispensable, and measurably better than alternative models, for complex feature development in an existing codebase. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to nearly one-shotting features. Even still, I only use it for the hardest features and Opus 5 does a good enough job on the rest.

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