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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

#161

Post by YetAnotherNick »

a1371 wrote: post #113

Where Anthropic f'ed up was treating their monetization the way they treat model training. Turns out that success in experimentation is not transferrable. They have tried to find the highest that the market pays for sota models; however, on the consumer side, this is just too confusing and unsettling: "You can only use Fable for a week as a part of your plan" "Be ready! You have to start paying per token!" "Nevermind…

I don't think Anthropic wants a stable experience on their consumer subscription plans. It is just used for customer acquisition who will then ask their employer to pay for enterprise plan(assuming most employer care about data control) which is based on tokens.

Most coders don't pay for tokens themselves. It's just on reddit and HN you would think that everybody does.

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

#162

Post by atleastoptimal »

Like 90% of consumer AI use is stuff like "please write a summary of this PDF for me", or "Find a cheaper version of this product online", eventually the returns on model intelligence taper off for these kinds of tasks. However for the kind of frontier tasks they are testing the models on now, like math, science, etc. the marginal returns on increased intelligence are huge.

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

#163

Post by usaar333 »

semiquaver wrote: post #94

My company still hasn’t been able to deploy wide access to Fable because it’s not available on a ZDR basis. This wasn’t mentioned in the article but I imagine this factor is not irrelevant.

It was in one paragraph mentioned, without much detail. But yes, I agree it is one of the largest barriers.

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

#164

Post by philipbjorge »

lnenad wrote: post #41

As a small background, I have a local server and I've been trying out different models with different inference engines, quants, configurations etc... I'm also using Opus and Sol at work consistently. I've used AI since the first wave, first as a toy, then as a highly specific tool, last 6+ months as the primary LoC generator. This is the first time I've felt, and I use the word *felt* since I don't have a suite of b…

> When you actually put them to the test you see 500k tokens of reasoning with "Actually..." and "Wait..." in every third paragraph of their reasoning trace.

I've wondered if this is part of why we don't see the reasoning traces for Anthropic's models before -- Open models might just be accurately surfacing how the sausage is made.

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

#165

Post by bryan0 »

Retr0id wrote: post #140
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 _…

> The statistics bear this out. 4.8 still dominates. Where can I find these stats?

The article has a chart with this data. They credit “Ramp AI index”. The chart’s a bit confusing though, like what are the units of the y-axis?

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

#166

Post by runako »

The US government basically told them they can't sell "Fable" and so they aren't. That's probably 90% of the story.

Once the government stepped in, their 5th generation was effectively killed. They either had to lock it up (Mythos), neuter it (Fable), or leave people with the perception they were overpaying for a weaker model (Opus 5).

Hopefully Anthropic has learned to anticipate this risk and has a plan for rollout of their next model that plans for capricious ad-hoc regulation.

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

#167

Post by cactusplant7374 »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #161
a1371 wrote: post #113

Where Anthropic f'ed up was treating their monetization the way they treat model training. Turns out that success in experimentation is not transferrable. They have tried to find the highest that the market pays for sota models; however, on the consumer side, this is just too confusing and unsettling: "You can only use Fable for a week as a part of your plan" "Be ready! You have to start paying per token!" "Nevermind…

I don't think Anthropic wants a stable experience on their consumer subscription plans. It is just used for customer acquisition who will then ask their employer to pay for enterprise plan(assuming most employer care about data control) which is based on tokens. Most coders don't pay for tokens themselves. It's just on reddit and HN you would think that everybody does.

Dario said in an interview that they originally wanted to be an enterprise only company.

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

#168

Post by andai »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #167
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Anthropic wants a stable experience on their consumer subscription plans. It is just used for customer acquisition who will then ask their employer to pay for enterprise plan(assuming most employer care about data control) which is based on tokens. Most coders don't pay for tokens themselves. It's just on reddit and HN you would think that everybody does.

Dario said in an interview that they originally wanted to be an enterprise only company.

What changed their mind?

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

#169

Post by codebje »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #161
a1371 wrote: post #113

Where Anthropic f'ed up was treating their monetization the way they treat model training. Turns out that success in experimentation is not transferrable. They have tried to find the highest that the market pays for sota models; however, on the consumer side, this is just too confusing and unsettling: "You can only use Fable for a week as a part of your plan" "Be ready! You have to start paying per token!" "Nevermind…

I don't think Anthropic wants a stable experience on their consumer subscription plans. It is just used for customer acquisition who will then ask their employer to pay for enterprise plan(assuming most employer care about data control) which is based on tokens. Most coders don't pay for tokens themselves. It's just on reddit and HN you would think that everybody does.

I pay for my tokens for my own projects, at least when the ones Google seems willing to keep throwing at me for free don't cut it. I'd think that's not too uncommon, especially here where there's likely a high ratio of hobby coders (whether also professionals or otherwise).

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

#170

Post by nrmitchi »

Anthropic's issues, as I see them, are:

1. They acted as if they were so far ahead capability wise that they could stop listening to their users.

That is basically it. It is an extremely common belief that Opus 5 acts like a condescending wannabe-thought-leader, yet Anthropic's response to this is largely been "You're using it wrong. Try deleting all your config files".

They released a "concise" output format, but pretty much swept it under the rug, despite it being one of the loudest complaints about their models. It also, generally, does not work as described.

Not only did Opus 5 get much more difficult to work with, but it got, from a customer view, significantly slower. The token rate might be the same, but if every interaction takes 50% more tokens, it's 50% slower.

All this time OpenAI has released a slew of new models, lowered the price on them (which, bluntly, 80% of user count don't actually care about since they're on subscriptions), increased subscription capacity, and increased response speed.

It's not about cost. It's about Anthropic being the frontier-lab version of the marathon runner who decides to celebrate to early, and then loses the race.

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