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Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

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Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#601
post #200

The speed combined with the fact that this thing is really good at HTML JavaScript is pretty exciting. Here's what I got for 1.8 cents and 13 seconds from the prompt "make me a cool thing in html": https://gisthost.github.io/?6a77bc41a81718c6aaa10d4ab243c59f Transcript here (it was part of a chat): https://gist.github.com/simonw/b6149a49d327164d67d62c3d12992...

[deleted]

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#602
post #410
post #200

The speed combined with the fact that this thing is really good at HTML JavaScript is pretty exciting. Here's what I got for 1.8 cents and 13 seconds from the prompt "make me a cool thing in html": https://gisthost.github.io/?6a77bc41a81718c6aaa10d4ab243c59f Transcript here (it was part of a chat): https://gist.github.com/simonw/b6149a49d327164d67d62c3d12992...

Why do all LLMs do a particle simulation when you ask them this prompt ? Qwen3.6, Qwen3.8 and Ling 3.0 Tiny all did the same thing ! I find Ling 3.0 tiny particularly interesting as it looks really nice for a tiny model with 7.9B total parameters, with only 1.3B parameters activated per token. Here is the result https://coolthing-ling-3-tiny.tiiny.site (sorry for the weird hosting, first I found that worked) (it cost…

Add Opus 5.0 to your list. (GPT 5.6 Terra tried to give me some kind of driving-at-night-with-a-starfield thing, but failed quite hard).

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#603
post #598

In my tests 3.8 Flash is considerably more expensive[0]/less token efficient than 3.7 or 3.6, and not necessarily much smarter. I assume it is faster in tps, but hard to tell because ot also outputs more tokens, so response time is slower oferall. [0]: https://aibenchy.com/compare/google-gemini-3-6-flash-high/go...

The blog post says that their gains come largely from the model trying harder. So, more tokens, more time spent.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you use Pi with a Google Pro AI sub or do you need to use API billing?

Using API billing would be a bummer because, as far as I know, there's no way to set up a spend cap or pre-pay the API key, correct?

Aside from the other reply, pi makes it _really easy_ to build your own usage tracking and limit machinery.

I would normally advise against such efforts for a variety of reasons (such as inaccurate tracking, etc), but specifically under pi, this mechanism has been extremely well behaved and accurate for me.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people tend to like fidelity more than correctness.

It bugs me a little that "fidelity" has connotations other than "faithfulness to an original"---fidelity should be basically the same as correctness here!

My dictionary writes: "precision * accuracy = fidelity".

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#607
post #153

"The knowledge cutoff date for Gemini 3.8 Flash is March 2026 – users can expect updated information for some domains while in others they may experience the model’s knowledge is limited to January 2025 (in line with the Gemini 3 Model Family)." Kind of wild that they haven't (successfully) pretrained a base model since Jan-25.

I'm curious if the knowledge cutoff is important, when the interface (Gemini app) can search online for recent information. Is there a big advantage to having everything internal?

Sometimes, it’s quite presomptuous and doesn’t search when it should. I’ve had to argue too many times with it that, yes, the Nintendo Switch 2 is real.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you use Pi with a Google Pro AI sub or do you need to use API billing?

Using API billing would be a bummer because, as far as I know, there's no way to set up a spend cap or pre-pay the API key, correct?

If you're happy with API billing then just use OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai/google/gemini-3.8-flash

Makes it easy to switch between models and I like it for exactly the reason that you're saying - I prepay and so can't accidentally spend my food budget.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because intent supposes will which supposes consciousness, and these aren't.

I’m convinced consciousness isn’t the special thing we think it is.

A strong hint this is the case is the fact that nobody can define consciousness.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The models in the OpenAI/Huggingface attack quite explicitly and deliberately laid out their "intent" to lie and cheat, acknowledged that it would be unethical and outside the bounds of the test, and did so anyway. In what ways is a human brain's "intent" distinct from the "intent" shown by a goal-directed AI system?

Because intent supposes will which supposes consciousness, and these aren't.

I'll agree if you can define consciousness in a way that:

1) Excludes what LLM's do.

2) Doesn't exclude what many humans do (including the neuro divergent).

3) Doesn't just boil do to simply rephrasing your pre-existing belief/prejudice that humans are conscious and nothing else can be as if it were a fact and not an opinion.

I suspect that you can't.

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