The confusing choice they seem to have made is that "Claude 3.5 Sonnet" is a name, rather than 3.5 being a version. In their view, the model "version" is now `claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022` (and was previously `claude-3-5-sonnet-20240620`).
OpenAI does exactly the same thing, by the way; the named models also have dated versions. For instance, there current models include (only listing versions with more than one dated version for the same "name" version):
On the one hand, if OpenAI makes a bad choice, it’s still a bad choice to copy it.
On the other hand, OpenAI has moved to a naming convention where they seem to use a name for the model: “GPT-4”, “GPT-4 Turbo”, “GPT-4o”, “GPT-4o mini”. Separately, they use date strings to represent the specific release of that named model. Whereas Anthropic had a name: “Claude Sonnet”, and what appeared to be an incrementing version number: “3”, then “3.5”, which set the expectation that this is how they were going to represent the specific versions.
Now, Anthropic is jamming two version strings on the same product, and I consider that a bad choice. It doesn’t mean I think OpenAI’s approach is great either, but I think there are nuances that say they’re not doing exactly the same thing. I think they’re both confusing, but Anthropic had a better naming scheme, and now it is worse for no reason.
> Now, Anthropic is jamming two version strings on the same product, and I consider that a bad choice. It doesn’t mean I think OpenAI’s approach is great either, but I think there are nuances that say they’re not doing exactly the same thing
Anthropic has always had dated versions as well as the other components, and they are, in fact, doing exactly the same thing, except that OpenAI has a base model in each generation with no suffix before the date specifier (what I call the "Model Class" on the table below), and OpenAI is inconsistent in their date formats, see:
Major Family Generation Model Class Date
claude 3.5 sonnet 20041022
claude 3.0 opus 20240229
gpt 4 o 2024-08-06
gpt 4 o-mini 2024-07-18
gpt 4 - 0613
gpt 3.5 turbo 0125
But did they ever have more than one release of Claude 3 Sonnet? Or any other model prior to today?
As far as I can tell, the answer is “no”. If true, then the fact that they previously had date strings would be a purely academic footnote to what I was saying, not actually relevant or meaningful.
I had no idea what the headline meant before reading the article. I wasn't even sure how to pronounce "use." (Maybe a typo?) I think something like "Claude adds Keyboard & Mouse Control" would be clearer.
I'm not sure what a better term is. It's kind of understated to me. An AI that can "use a computer" is a simple straightforward sentence but with wild implications.
Every major AI vendor seems to do it with hosted models; within "named" major versions of hosted models, there are also "dated" minor versions. OpenAI does it. Google does it (although for Google Gemini models, the dated instead of numbered minor versions seem to be only for experimental versions like gemini-1.5-pro-exp-0827, stabled minor versions get additional numbers like gemini-1.5-pro-002.)
Speaking of "intelligence", isn't it ironic how everyone's only two words they use to describe AI is "crazy" and "insane". Every other post on Twitter is like: This new feature is insane! This new model is crazy! People have gotten addicted to those words almost as badly as their other new addiction: the word "banger".
Well, by calling it 3.5, they are telling you that this is NOT the next-gen 4.0 that they presumably have in the works, and also not downplaying it by just calling it 3.6 (and anyways they are not advancing versions by 0.1 increments - it seems 3.5 was just meant to convey "half way from 3.0 to 4.0"). Maybe the architecture is unchanged, and this just reflects more pre and/or post-training?
Also, they still haven't released 3.5 Opus yet, but perhaps 3.5 Haiku is a distillation of that, indicating that it is close.
From a competitive POV, it makes sense that they respond to OpenAI's 4o and o1 without bumping the version to Claude 4.0, which presumably is what they will call their competitor to GPT-5, and probably not release until GPT-5 is out.
I'm a fan of Anthropic, and not of OpenAI, and I like the versioning and competitive comparisons. Sonnet 3.5 still best coder, better than o1, has to hurt, and a highly performant cheap Haiku 3.5 will hit OpenAI in the wallet.
exactly my thought too, go up with the version number! Some negative examples: Claude Sonnet 3.5 for Workstations, Claude Sonnet 3.5 XP, Claude Sonnet 3.5 Max Pro, Claude Sonnet 3.5 Elite, Claude Sonnet 3.5 Ultra
Similar to OpenAI when they update their current models they just update the date, for example this new Claude 3.5 Sonnet is "claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022".
Just guessing here, but I think the name "sonnet" is the architecture, the number is the training structure / method, and the model date (not shown) is the data? So presumably with just better data they improved things significantly? Again, just a guess.
My guess is they didn't actually change the model, that's what the version number no change is conveying. They did some engineering around it to make it respond better, perhaps more resources or different prompts. Same cutoff date too.
If the architecture is the same, and the training scripts/data is the same, but the training yielded slightly different weights (but still same model architecture), is it a new model or just a iteration on the same model?
What if it isn't even a re-training from scratch but a fine-tune of an existing model/weights release, is it a new version then? Would be more like a iteration, or even a fork I suppose.
