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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

#261
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.

China uses the strategy of letting dangerous technologies loose which causes disruption in the short term but makes people do the right thing like secure their software. The US by comparison gives me the impression of wanting to leave the internet vulnerable by not making Mythos public so that only the US government can use Mythos to gain access to whatever system they like, which is the same thing the pegasus software does

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

#262
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…

They need to fire their growth marketer

Their truth is “we don't have compute and are working to improve capacity”

People would root for that

Instead they got people rushing to escape the permanent underclass until they have a mental health crisis just to beat the fake deadline. $100, $200, is a lot for those people

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

#264
post #230

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.

How many big tech companies let you talk to a human to get support. Automation is wonderful to cut cost for them but for the users being unable to get support is a horrible experience. But you cannot go elsewhere because they are the only player in town.

How can small companies with 1000x less money able to provide live support, but if you pay 20, 100, 200 dollars for a subscription you dont have a phone number to call ?

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

#265
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 'jailbrea…

I think the latter is likely their primary concern. Certain models making hackers more effective doesn’t change that black hat hacking will still be illegal and that’s always been the prime deterrent against capable hackers.

While there is some fallout likely with much more effective hacking being easily accessible, I’m sure govt analysts (unless they were let go) have their own prediction models telling them it’s inevitable that this technology eventually makes it to everyone they don’t want having it, what with China seemingly releasing every progress they make openly. Which makes me think that they’re preparing for that inevitability by hardening the govt systems currently in place and/or by burying the secrets they want to keep hidden deeper underground.

Given the history of the US and this particular administration, I feel burying things deeper is a greater priority.

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

#266

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…

As soon as I started using Fable I was like, okay, this is probably as good a model as I will need for software engineering going forward. I still feel that way. I don’t need a better model, I need a faster Fable. The thing I miss most about programming is flow, and the constant bouncing between terminal tabs sucks. I’d love to do one thing at a time, with Fable, quickly.

remember 4 year ago we use to : have stack overflow open, documentation, obscure forums plus other tabs.

An ide open with 20 tabs open each file a component, a class or an interface We also use to hold entire codebases in our brain.

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

#267
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…

> Most people want to not care. We want our AI like electricity

I was with you until this part where the metaphor completely falls apart :p

https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/resid...

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

#268
post #220

Mythos? That's only for super special corporations, you need not apply. Fable? Can't even look at it wrong without running into cybersecurity lockouts. And even if you get past this, it's limited to So stingy. Even with OpenAI's recent usage troubles, they're still so much better than Anthropic it's not even funny. Re-ran the code review with Sol as a benchmark and it turns out Sol's performance is within 70%-90% of…

50% usage plus there seems to be a pretty big metering multiplier still. Do a relatively in-depth review of 3k LoC with Fable xhigh and poof, there goes 5% of the weekly Fable allowance. If I use their first party code-review skill that spawns a bunch of subagents—well just forget about it.

I had Max 5x and every 5h window would bite off 10% of my weekly usage. Five Fable sessions per week.

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

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But translations don't require anything close to SOTA level models. Translations will be high volume, low margin transactions. That will not save Anthropic.

Maybe not Anthropic, but LLM translations has a value counted in the trillions of dollars easily.

I see it's important but trillions? How did you quantify that number?

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

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The analogy is apt because I feel this is exactly what keeps Anthropic and OpenAI's owners up at night -- becoming the utility company the People want them to be. Ironically their behavior may accelerate their fears. And yes, the so-called safety features are ridiculously invasive and the worst is agreeing to have surveillance cameras installed in every room that occasionally detect any attempt to grow plants with LED strips as a pot farm. After a false alarm of almost having my ChatGPT account terminated for cybersecurity abuse and appeals auto-denied twice (I did nothing even close to hacking), I have started doing everything I can to decrease switching costs and thus the bargaining power of the suppliers and I'm doing the same for my company.
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