‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

Claude Opus 5.5 Intelligence, Performance and Price Analysis (Max)

333 points · 106 comments · theanonymousone

  1. simonw · · focus · HN ↗
    This is the page for the &quot;max&quot; reasoning setting. The page for xhigh is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;artificialanalysis.ai&#x2F;models&#x2F;claude-opus-5-5-xhigh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;artificialanalysis.ai&#x2F;models&#x2F;claude-opus-5-5-xhigh and the page for medium (the default setting) is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;artificialanalysis.ai&#x2F;models&#x2F;claude-opus-5-5-medium" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;artificialanalysis.ai&#x2F;models&#x2F;claude-opus-5-5-medium

    I&#x27;ve failed twice to get &quot;Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle&quot; to work with max, because in both cases it ran out of the 128,000 token budget while it was still reasoning about the problem.

    I&#x27;m suspicious that &quot;max&quot; may be virtually useless if it&#x27;s that easy to have it overthink to the point that it doesn&#x27;t get to a response.

    Transcript for one attempt here - expand the &quot;Reasoning trace&quot; bit to see it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tools.simonwillison.net&#x2F;markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2F61fd7c3683fffce9a3ab7c43d1180024#reasoning-3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tools.simonwillison.net&#x2F;markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...

    1. amelius · · focus · HN ↗
      Pick 10 reasonably intelligent people randomly. How many of them do you think can draw a pelican on a bicycle? I bet most of them can barely even draw a bicycle.

      This whole test tells me nothing.

      The next person who proposes to use it should draw it themselves first.

      1. simonw · · focus · HN ↗
        The fact that bicycles are hard for people to draw was one of the inspirations for the test.
        1. amelius · · focus · HN ↗
          But:

          1. I don&#x27;t want my AI to have super-human intelligence. It would generate code that I do not understand. A coder with human capabilities is better for me.

          2. We&#x27;re interested in AGI. If the AI reaches human intelligence, that&#x27;s a milestone. Drawing bicycles with pelicans is superhuman. Hence not a relevant test.

          1. simonw · · focus · HN ↗
            &quot;Drawing bicycles with pelicans is superhuman.&quot;

            It really isn&#x27;t. Many humans can draw a bicycle, and a pelican, just fine.

            1. Reddit_MLP2 · · focus · HN ↗
              It is harder than you may think for many people... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gianlucagimini.it&#x2F;portfolio-item&#x2F;velocipedia&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gianlucagimini.it&#x2F;portfolio-item&#x2F;velocipedia&#x2F;
Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.