There was a model called Astra-Minor, found in the files a few days ago. I assume Sol 6.1 is this, as a last minute panic rename due to Sol 6 being underwhelming while Opus 5.5 turned out really strong. I can't really explain releasing Sol 6 in any other way, especially mere days ago.
I find those (Italian?) names super confusing as a non-Italian. I automatically read "tall" in English and think "ok it's tall as in high so this gotta big" -> "wait, what is 'grande' then and how is that different from tall?" -> "venti? Genshin Impact character??"
Of course the point of their joke is that those are super confusing too.
But the origin is size inflation. The original Starbucks sizes were short and tall. Shorts are still available, in at least a few outlets, despite having not been on the menu for at least 20 years. (For a while a few years ago here in the UK, I even saw short as a column on the menu at one, but that's very rare.) Then they added grande, literally meaning large but maybe meaning more like "extra large". Then when they added an even bigger size, since large was already taken, they just stated the actual size "venti" = 20 (fluid ounces).
(The first time I ever went to a Starbucks had the same confusion as you. I didn't know what an espresso was but at least its sizes of "single" and "double" were easier to understand, so I got a double and was a bit surprised at how small my drink was!)
I like it. It's cool and better than Opus, Fable, Sonnet etc.
Like who can figure out the ordering? With Luna < Terra < Sol < Astra it's obvious at a glance.
I propose for some third company to name after monsters: Cyclops < Minotaur < Ettin < Cerberus < Hydra < Kraken < Nyarlathotep (the AGI singularity stage)
It’s not… why do I need to translate from Latin (or wherever these come from) to understand them? Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku do the same thing, and are widely known words. Not to mention all LLMs do is generate tokens; I prefer the homage to writing over a space reference.
> When was the last time you heard anybody say "opus" or "sonnet" before this?
Not a lot, but occasionally. I was familiar with the words.
> Also it implies that "haikus" are inherently inferior to longer texts which may be kinda frown-inducing..
It really doesn't.
The one real weakness of Anthropic's naming is that Fable doesn't fit. A fable is typically a fairly short story whereas I think of an opus (if a written work) as being at least a long book and maybe a whole collection of books.
I find Luna vs Terra more clear. I know what a haiku is only because it hss some sort of hype factor among certain crowds. But I have no idea what a sonnet is, I heard of the word but never seen or written one. Opus vaguely reminds me of something in Greek mythology but also no idea what that, let alone the apparent implication that it's supposed to be longer than a sonnet.
haiku (the model family) was not inherently inferior to its larger, more expensive siblings. Sometimes you prefer a cheap, fast model, just like how sometimes you prefer a shorter poem.
My brain immediately translated "Luna -> Terra -> Sol -> Astra" to "Moon -> Earth -> Sun -> Galaxy", an overall growing of size. While sure, "astra" doesn't directly translate to "galaxy", it's the base of the word "astronomical" and "astronomy".
I feel like people who don't get it immediately are just being deliberately obtuse.
It's a language-nerd joke he made. You have to know some Latin basically or enough Latinate roots. Those are the Latin-ish words for, in the same order: moon earth sun stars. So it's obvious in the sense of, it's increasing in size (assuming stars is the collection of all of them while the sun is just one of all the stars or one example of its parent category).
Yes. Also, celestial bodies are not ordered. And remembering them doesn't do anything for estimating the power level of a particular LLM named after it.
I forgot about Terra's model existence and after Astra release I was temporarily confused about Astra and what's that do, because I had an idea that maybe it was about observed size, so Astra should be the smallest maybe?
Honestly, the old boring business lingo of adding Pro and Max suffixes would have been clearer for both companies.
Also, cyclops is assuredly bigger than minotaur in almost any reference. And what's "ettin"?
Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus also made sense to me, but Fable ruined it. It isn't at all clear that a fable is bigger/grander than someone's magnum opus—actually, I'd think probably the opposite.
I don't think it gets better if you swap "fable" for "myth" either, although when you add "-os" to the end it suddenly sounds grander so there's that. Mythos isn't a model I can use, though.
an opus isn't a magnum opus fyi. magnum opus is a phrase with means one's greatest work, where opus in latin means "work". but in this context opus refers to an ordered series of musical compositions
Is it? The order if Luna and Terra in particular is not obvious to me. I would have put them the other way around, especially given the "to the moon" meme.
Many people would get confused on the order of Opus, Fable and Mythos. In my mind, they are even from different groups; fable is a synonym forba fairytale (perhaps with songs), mythos is communicating importance and status instead of a size, while opus is the only one which in my mind communicates a big size. "What did you think about the Tolstoy's book? It was not a book, but a real opus, a tedious, incomprehensible, sluggish monumental opus."
Terra is the "missing middle" model and had no positive brand recognition. Sol was for intelligence, Luna was for efficiency. Luna max was cheaper and smarter than terra light and sol light was better than terra max.
I mean, when I upgraded my pipeline from terra to sol saying "it's the same price basically!" I was excited. Probably would not have felt as excited if it was just a version bump.
Not sure that's why they did it. But that was my experience.
Was it a last-minute panic, or just OpenAI releasing an update when the had a bit more training under their belt to make 6.1-sol a whole lot better? Either way, I'm extremely pleased and will be giving this model a shot.
