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Fable 5 – Median thinking declined in August

428 points · 293 comments · espeed

  1. talon8635 · · focus · HN ↗
    Could there be a benefit to releasing a new model, slowly dumbing it down over a couple months, then releasing a new model that’s marginally if at all better than the original to create a perceived improvement when in reality there isn’t really one?

    For an industry that’s stagnant in progress yet relies on new frequent releases to survive (non-progress being an existential risk), this could make sense.

    I have no idea if that’s what’s happened, I completely pulled it out of my butt. And I have no idea is the actual frontier is stagnating.

    1. AmazingTurtle · · focus · HN ↗
      > Could there be a benefit to releasing a new model, slowly dumbing it down over a couple months, then releasing a new model that’s marginally if at all better than the original to create a perceived improvement when in reality there isn’t really one?

      Exactly what I am saying for months now. And it's exactly the reason why I am shifting to open weight models now. Just bought myself a 2x DGX Spark Cluster. Will run Qwen3.8 Flash Next on it, maybe Qwen4 when it comes out.

      Not only do I have full control over quantization and inference, but also will I experience a constant level of quality. It won't be frontier. But it will be stable, and that's enough reason for me to switch. Also I will likely save some money on subscriptions.

      1. redanddead · · focus · HN ↗
        Serving compute is their main value prop

        Yet… even Altman called out Anthropic for serving dumbed down models.

        Shits weird man

        1. tasuki · · focus · HN ↗
          > Yet… even Altman called out Anthropic for serving dumbed down models.

          Even Altman called out Anthropic? Isn't Anthropic the biggest competitor Sam Altman has?

          1. redanddead · · focus · HN ↗
            Yeah, and? They share a business model
          2. TacticalCoder · · focus · HN ↗
            > Isn't Anthropic the biggest competitor Sam Altman has?

            Not by a mile. They're even (probably illegally and there's apparently a class action lawsuit oncoming: at least something to that extent was posted on HN today) teaming up, as a duopoly, to push for the same bullshit regulations / "we need to slow down AI research".

            The reason they're teaming up is the real competition is, as in many other domains, China.

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