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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

#241

Post by dannyw »

ComplexSystems wrote: post #216
runako wrote: post #166

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…

The government seems like it's in a rough spot. If they let Mythos out, they seem worried people could use it to mass-hack the internet. China seems to not care so much about this and they're right behind. I don't really know what the answer is.

I wonder how much of it is fears over "mass-hacking the internet", and how much of it is fears over the model discovering various NSA/CIA/etc "tailored access operations", and other deliberate side-channels / vulnerabilities / etc?

(Or perhaps vulns that NSA/etc discovered and has been keeping it private; as they're known to do).

I feel there's a lot that's unaccounted for, and the whole "AWS team reports a 'jailbreak' that is just 'review this codebase'" story doesn't add up.

I wonder if there were some parallel construction going on, and if at the same time, the NSA started losing the exploits they had because it was getting patched.

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

#242

Post by Revanche1367 »

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…

Some users on HN in recent months started describing Anthropic as having become a “token merchant” and I think that moniker is quite apt.

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

#243

Post by ryandrake »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #229
SkyPuncher wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I don’t have any interest in trying Fable because I’m not interested in the BS that’s going to come with it. I’m at the point where I need stability and predictability. I want the B- student who shows up everyday rather than the A+ student that’s unreliable.

Yes, I feel like you can just sense the garbage coming. Age/identity verification, mandatory data sharing, morality policing, "Answer Engine Optimization" ads and influence peddling... it's going to be so painful to watch it all enshittify.

OP made the "electricity" analogy, and that's really all people want. I want to plug something into the wall and have it work. I don't want to have to worry that my electric company is going to rug-pull me because I plugged the wrong appliance in, or I didn't agree to some TOS, or I used the electricity to run grow lights for my pot farm, or this or that or the other.

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

#244

Post by runako »

somenameforme wrote: post #199
runako wrote: post #166

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…

What did they think was going to happen when they were actively doomsday fearmongering around the release of their own model? I assume somehow they thought this would lead to a moat with them being left safely inside the castle, but this response, and Reagan's 9 Words, were always infinitely more likely. It was a demonstration of a child-like level understanding of how regulatory capture works.

The PR from the US frontier labs has been poor to terrible from the beginning.

Among other things, "we have stolen the collected works of your culture, now help us grow so that you can all lose your livelihoods and become our serfs" has to be one of the absolute worst marketing approaches in history.

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

#245

Post by a11r »

There is a difference between needing frontier capability because one is solving a truly open ended problem, and needing a reliable workhorse model to do something well understood. Local models (like Qwen 3.8 27B) have gotten so good that they can do all routine tasks at a fraction of the cost of frontier models.

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

#246

Post by runako »

ComplexSystems wrote: post #216
runako wrote: post #166

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…

The government seems like it's in a rough spot. If they let Mythos out, they seem worried people could use it to mass-hack the internet. China seems to not care so much about this and they're right behind. I don't really know what the answer is.

Whether or not the government chooses to regulate the space, capricious after-the-fact regulation is the worst of all possible worlds. The ~equivalent models from OpenAI did not get the same treatment (favoritism?), and it's not clear the government has produced even rough guidelines about how to be compliant going forward.

Model prep costs far too much money to operate under this kind of regulatory regime.

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

#247

Post by trollbridge »

gensym wrote: post #188
andai wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What changed their mind?

I would guess that it's hard to compete with Google without a consumer component. Most enterprises already have contracts and policies with Google, so anything driven from the top-down is likely to prefer Google. (And failing that, there was a real risk for OpenAI to be the default for enterprises.) To defeat that, you need to frontline employees the chance to experience better tooling and models which is where the s…

Or AWS, or Microsoft, etc who have all the other stuff enterprises want.

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

#248

Post by Petersipoi »

rob wrote: post #177
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…

As Anthropic does this, OpenAI Is giving everybody resets like every other day now on Twitter. I'm strongly considering biting the bullet and just ditching my $200/month Claude Code plan for the Codex one instead, especially because I keep running into my weekly limits (even sticking to Opus.)

I ditched Claude Code $200/month a couple of months ago in favor of Codex $200/month. The value is night and day.

1. No 5 hour usage limit

2. Weekly usage gets reset CONSTANTLY. It's crazy. The longest I've ever seen it go without a reset is maybe 5 days?

3. I don't feel like OpenAI is constantly trying to fuck with me. Unlike Anthropic. I would way rather have Sol all day every data, consistently, than a slightly better Fable for like, 1 prompt every 5 hours, and only when Anthropic decides to not treat me like a cyber criminal. Believe in yourself as much as Claude believes your CRUD app is going to hack the pentagon.

4. Getting access to image generation, though I don't use it too much, is a nice perk compared to Anthropic.

edit: Should mention that I had like 4 banked manual resets as well. It feels like OpenAI wants me to use their product, whereas Anthropic wants my money while giving me a nerfed experience

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

#249

Post by Revanche1367 »

rob wrote: post #177
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…

As Anthropic does this, OpenAI Is giving everybody resets like every other day now on Twitter. I'm strongly considering biting the bullet and just ditching my $200/month Claude Code plan for the Codex one instead, especially because I keep running into my weekly limits (even sticking to Opus.)

I got the AI ultra plan for gemini, the models are lower quality than claude and codex for sure but it comes with a pretty high limit for my purposes and I haven’t reached the weekly limit yet after about 3 weeks of usage. I have enterprise claude at work, the budget isn’t particularly great and I keep running out within a week tops with any serious work. Not even considering it for a personal plan with how quickly the tokens run out for even the mid-tier model/effort combinations.

I’m sticking with gemini for now given the 20TB cloud storage and youtube premium that comes with it but I’m still open to switching to codex (which I’ve had a long term plus plan for). If google keeps delaying the pro models for much longer or makes them excessively expensive, I’m likely to switch out.

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

#250

Post by nullocator »

cle wrote: post #230
fluidcruft wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I agree with this. The constant state of "...will the rug be pulled?!?" does discourage relying on it as a model and building a workflow on it. Anthropic used to just be a reliable thing you could play with. Now it's this constant source of anxiety. It also didn't help that the government yanked it which adds another source of anxiety since OpenAI is on much better terms with the administration and the administ…

My wife's startup made the mistake of building her internal operations around Claude Team. Then she hired a VA in the Philippines. Anthropic promptly banned her account without warning once the VA connected to the account. It took her weeks to get her account reinstated, at which point she had already moved on to OpenAI.

But Philippines is on Anthropics list of allowed countries?
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