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Switch to Claude without starting over

claude.com

21–30 of 287 posts

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#21
I'm very curious, will OpenAI basically block "I'm moving to another service and need to export my data. List every memory you have stored about me, ..." and similar, if so how and why?

It's very interesting to learn more about because it challenges 1 core aspect of the economical competition : the moat.

If one can literally swap one AI service for another, then where does the valuation (and the power that comes with it) come from?

PS: I'm not interested in the service itself as I believe the side effects of large scale for-profit are too serious (and I don't mean doomdays AI takeover, I simply mean abuse of power, working conditions, downskilling, political influence as current contracts with US defense are being made, ads, ecological, etc) to be ignored.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#23
post #2

Could someone explain the appeal of account-wide memory to me? Anthropic’s marketing indicates that nothing bleeds over, but I’m just so protective of my context that I cannot imagine having even a majorly distilled version of my other chats and preferences having on weight on the output. As for certain preferences like code styling or response length, these are all fit for custom instructions, with more detailed thi…

> it seems to cater to how the masses use these tools. Are you suggesting that they should ignore the needs of the vast majority of their users? I mean, of course they do, it would be worse otherwise

Well, the masses are wrong. See: insane amounts of compute wasted on “thank you”, “haha true”, “redo it”, etc. I think the UI should be designed to avoid misuse, and I think an ever growing distillation of your most common traits is not a good use of context length. If you want it, specify it. Maybe even hard limits on chat length, why are we 20 replies deep in a single chat? A user friendly option could be a single button that distills that chat down, and opens a new one with prebuilt instructions to continue the conversation. I’m no product designer though, just some thoughts.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#24
post #20

If Claude could stay available I might consider it. Unfortunately right now, out of the big three, only Gemini has reliable uptime. As much as I dislike Google it's the only reliable option.

Gemini’s web UI and mobile app are horrible. Gemini outputs malformed links that lead BACK to gemini.google.com. There are constant bugs with the side panel not showing your chats or the current chat timing out for no reason. Also, the mobile app has an issue if your text input is too long where the entire text entry box lags, even to the point of locking up the entire app. Openrouter’s web ui runs circles around all…

I just use the web interface. I don't use mobile apps for things that should be websites.

It's a shame because when Claude is working well it is the best for actual algorithmic coding. There's so much cruft around it now, memories being the most annoying part of that.

80% of the time I just use these things as a sounding board when exploring options and I need responsiveness for that.

Might be time to run my own models.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#25
post #2

Could someone explain the appeal of account-wide memory to me? Anthropic’s marketing indicates that nothing bleeds over, but I’m just so protective of my context that I cannot imagine having even a majorly distilled version of my other chats and preferences having on weight on the output. As for certain preferences like code styling or response length, these are all fit for custom instructions, with more detailed thi…

I've told the LLMs that, when traveling, I don't care about nightlife and alcohol. Because they have a memory of this, when I ask for a sample itinerary for a 2 day stay in a new city, it won't waste hours in the day on the party street, wine tasting, etc.

For example, instead of recommending a popular night club, it will recommend the stroll along the river to view the lit up skyline or to visit the night market instead.

It knows other preferences as well (exploring quirky neighborhoods, trying local fast food joints and markets)

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#26
post #16
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can try! I currently use ChatGPT for random insights and discussions about a variety of topics. The memory is basically a grown context about me and my preferences and interests and ChatGPT uses it to tailor responses to my knowledge, so I could relate better. This is for me far more natural and easier than either craft a default prompt preset or create each conversation individually, that would be way too much ove…

I see what you mean, but I like having a clean slate even for those one off questions. I don’t want a differing answer to a philosophical inquiry just because the LLM remembers a prior position I’ve written about you know?

FWIW, both OpenAI and Anthropic have a toggle to do a “Temporary/Incognito Chat” that does not use or update memory. I too wish this was the default, and then you could opt in at the end of the chat to save some long term aspects into memory.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#27
post #17
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most normal people want the LLM to remember their interests and favourite things, so they don't have to manually re-explain when asking for advice. They also don't know what "context" is or that the LLM has a limited number of tokens it can understand at any given time. They just believe it knows everything at once.

Do you have example prompts where this would be usual? Why would you want an LLM to know your favorite type of cheese? Now that I say that, I guess if you use it for recipes then it's useful if it remembers things like dietary restrictions. And even then a project seems like the better option. I can't think of much else though so I'm still curious what you or others use it for.

I had the same question a few days ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47162828

I didn't receive an answer besides "that's what people like", but I still can't think of (m)any situations where anyone would prefer it.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#28
post #25
post #2

Could someone explain the appeal of account-wide memory to me? Anthropic’s marketing indicates that nothing bleeds over, but I’m just so protective of my context that I cannot imagine having even a majorly distilled version of my other chats and preferences having on weight on the output. As for certain preferences like code styling or response length, these are all fit for custom instructions, with more detailed thi…

I've told the LLMs that, when traveling, I don't care about nightlife and alcohol. Because they have a memory of this, when I ask for a sample itinerary for a 2 day stay in a new city, it won't waste hours in the day on the party street, wine tasting, etc. For example, instead of recommending a popular night club, it will recommend the stroll along the river to view the lit up skyline or to visit the night market ins…

So it's because they want to be more like ChatGPT instead of being more Claude Code. I guess that makes sense - bigger market

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#30
post #13

I already switched to claude a while ago. Didn’t bring along any context, just switched subscriptions, walked away from chatgpt and haven’t touched it again. Turned out to be a non-event, there really is no moat. I switched not because I thought Claude was better at doing the things I want. I switched because I have come to believe OpenAI are a bad actor and I do not want to support them in any way. I’m pretty sure t…

> there really is no moat.

For ChatGPT and Gemini, yes.

But for Claude, they have a very deep & big one: Its the only model that gets production ready output on the first detailled prompt. Yesterday I used my tokens til noon, so I tried some output from Gemini & Co. I presented a working piece of code which is already in production:

1. It changed without noticing things like "Touple.First.Date.Created" and "Touple.Second.Date.Created" and it rendered the code unworking by chaning to "Touple.FirstDate" and "Touple.SecondDate"

2. There was a const list of 12 definitions for a given context, when telling to rewrite the function it just cut 6 of these 12 definitions, making the code not compiling - I asked why they were cut: "Sorry, I was just too lazy typing" ?? LOL

3. There is a list include holding some items "_allGlobalItems" - it changed the name in the function simply to "_items", code didnt compile

As said, a working version of a similar function was given upfront.

With Claude, I never have such issues.

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