"standard" is doing a lot of work here
Previewing the Model Hardware Standard
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard
#22To me, this seems like OPC UA / SiLA but instead of being software machine semantics/control it's AI machine semantics/control. Or in simpler terms, an AI-facing hardware abstraction / device-description standard.
This is how I understand it:
Agent MCP/CLI/code MHS vendor API/SCPI/OPC UA/ROS/etc CAN/Modbus/USB/etc hardware
MHS can describe capabilites, metadata, safety limits, as well as provide read/write control and discovery. Things like "can measure temperature", "arm weighs X kg", "never exceed X RPM", that agents can easily understand. (as opposed to that being buried in a datasheet somewhere, or having to be included in the prompt)
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPC_Unified_Architecture, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_in_Lab_Automat..., https://xkcd.com/927/
Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard
#23I don't want to be that guy but did they invent bluetooth for ai? Like what is MHS actually? I read it twice and still don't get it
There are MANY packages in this space: Labs love to invent their own versions powered by the hubris of grad students. Anyway a random sampling of some I’ve come across is:
- EPICS
- TANGO
- Bluesky (not that one)
- QCodes
- Sardana
- yaq
Anthropic seem to be creating the n+1 version of those packages and presumably doing some harness work to make Claude good at using it.
Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard
#24MCP was a bucket of Not Invented Here nonsense, that ignored years of protocol design. It was incredibly jank and hard to run at any scale, for years and years. They finally looked at how other protocols do things, and made something that behaves in recent versions. But it's hard as heck to take this company at all seriously. The don't really care about ecosystems (AGENTS.md), they don't seem to know think or care mu…
It's a bit of both for Anthropic I think, sometimes cutting edge and quite interesting or just good improvements, sometimes ignoring best practices either recently established or known for decades. Obvious to see where the smart people are in high places at the company.
Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard
#25So far Anthropic shows remarkable taste in research, engineering, and product. Dario the ideologist attracts the most pure-minded talent in the industry. It indeed looks like Anthropic would be unchallenged for the foreseeable future. It'll be very interesting to see its downfall in 5-20 years.
5-20 years?
Have you seen the financials of the AI companies?
Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard
#26Are they in a position to define any kind of standards?
Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard
#27The standard makes sense: models work much better when devices expose standardized, machine-readable interfaces.
But as far as I can tell, this technical "standard" isn't actually public yet (you have to apply for access to even see or implement it.) Anthropic says they plan to open source it later.
Quite a departure from the way foundational hardware standards like USB and CAN were developed. You shouldn't need permission to read a standard.
Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard
#28So far Anthropic shows remarkable taste in research, engineering, and product. Dario the ideologist attracts the most pure-minded talent in the industry. It indeed looks like Anthropic would be unchallenged for the foreseeable future. It'll be very interesting to see its downfall in 5-20 years.
5-20 years? Have you seen the financials of the AI companies?
OAI and ANT are private, so I sure haven‘t seen their books.
Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard
#29How is this different from tool calls? Or rather, MCP?
Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard
#30MCP was a bucket of Not Invented Here nonsense, that ignored years of protocol design. It was incredibly jank and hard to run at any scale, for years and years. They finally looked at how other protocols do things, and made something that behaves in recent versions. But it's hard as heck to take this company at all seriously. The don't really care about ecosystems (AGENTS.md), they don't seem to know think or care mu…
I think they're doing this so they can have months of advanced notice of how the protocol will look, to post-train their models to be the only ones with the ability to interact with this protocol on the day it becomes public.
It's like creating conditions for a race where they structurally have months of advance. And realistically they have a credible shot at establishing the standard due to their weight in the industry, and control of the most popular AI distribution method (Claude).
So they create the race, knowing the race is what will likely establish the standard, and using some pretext to prevent other competitive athletes from training for it in advance. Other athletes only get to start when the gun fires.