Thread

1. gradus_ad · 1790701889 · focus · HN ↗

   Ominous for the industry and investors that token price is becoming the main battleground. Could be Anthropic's rationale for IPOing this year.

   1. mixdup · 1790702708 · focus · HN ↗

      Another piece of evidence on the pile that the sudden panic and desire to "slow down" is because they're hitting the plateau on capability

      Which, honestly, is fine. A lot of juice to squeeze in efficiency and even if models got zero more capable, making the capability that is already here cheaper is a huge win for everyone (except Nvidia)

      1. luma · 1790705106 · focus · HN ↗

         Some version of this claim has been made for the past 4 years. There's a data cliff, there's no more compute to buy, the financials don't make sense and all of these orgs will be out of business by end of quarter.

         Not once has any of these predictions come true, the pace of progress has continued on it's exponential trajectory since ChatGPT first came to the public's attention.

         So why now? What is special about today that suggests all of this is coming to a screeching halt despite all evidence to the contrary?

         1. OliveronData · 1790707409 · focus · HN ↗

            > ... the pace of progress has continued on it's exponential trajectory since ChatGPT first came to the public's attention.

            Did it? Model wise? I would understand agents wise, sure. But model wise? The attention to detail from the model? The ability to recall minute things? Improvements are there, yes, but mostly on Fable and Astra. Opus still isn't as attentive as Fable in long term writing for example.

            Sure, Opus 5.5 benchmarks better than Fable. Sure. But is that the model, or is that the RL for agentic work?

            From where I'm standing, the model work has not been exponential at all, and more and more it looks like the latest and greatest is getting too expensive too fast. Both 5.5 and 5.6 chat models got nerfed, actually nerfed not the tea leaves kind. In mid 5.5 cycle the chat model lost the ability to substitute names if given an outline. 5.6 cycle the chat model lost the ability to use paragraphs after a few hundred words (coinciding with Chat/Work split).

            There's a race from OpenAI to serve dumber models on chat. I'm not even sure who they are racing against, but the fact that Astra, Sol 6.0, and now Sol 6.1 not being available for chat, should tell you that those models are expensive, and not the kind of models that can be freely "chatted" with on a subscription. OpenAI much prefers you use Work and limit the chat usage, much like Grok and Claude. I'm guessing they will announce that later during the dev days.

            That could be cost cutting too, true, but really? That's the only explanation? And nothing else?

            Sure, the progress did not stop. But it is nowhere near close being exponential when it comes to LLMs themselves. Agents are separate.

            1. luma · 1790709326 · focus · HN ↗

               I didn't use the word LLM. I'm talking AI capability, you're focused on this or that current approach to AI. I think it's fair to assume that the approach will change as new ideas are learned, new and more hardware will be purchased and applied to the problem, and then capabilities will (for now) continue on their exponential curve, same as it has gone for the past several years.

               These things are knocking down Millennium Prize problems while a substantial subset of commenters here are still thinking about stochastic parrots.

               1. neta1337 · 1790711933 · focus · HN ↗

                  It is a bit harsh to call it knocking down considering all facts

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