- Serial (produces an incredibly exciting response which ends in a cliffhanger that withholds the answer)
- Prequel (instead of responding, it provides the full backstory leading up to your question)
- Yarn (maximizes output tokens by taking a long winding route to your answer)
- Head Canon (answers using its own entertainingly weird theories about the input)
- Overstory (your answer is interwoven with the answers from eight other users into a larger and deeply intertwined meta-answer)
- Oeuvre (for every question, it produces a diverse but cohesive body of work across a variety of mediums, each one a heartbreaking masterpiece in its own right)
Anthropic intentionally degrading responses shows you they're also focusing on the wrong things. Rather than producing the best model possible, they're nerfing their models' capabilities.
"Fable" is not the name I would have chosen for a product that has to argue for the fact of its own economic viability but it is the correct mood. Perhaps Anthropic is trolling Zitron.
The Dario Legendarium is definitely going to be a fun piece of work for historians to interrogate as to the origin of this age. The relative personalities of the orgs involved show somewhat in their naming: {o1,4o,3.5,5.5} vs. {Haiku,Sonnet,Opus} vs. {3.1, 3.5-pro, 3.5-flash, 3.5-flash-lite} vs. {3.7, 3.7-plus, 3.7-max}
It's a pity that Samsung isn't in the mix. I would have liked to have used a model named Samsung Galaxy S10+ 5G Lite.
Tractatus - highly aware of its limitations and refuses to speak about too many topics. Really likes numbering statements. Unusable due to a context window bug which is patched after considerable delay.
I miss the days when the dropdown menu (in their consumer product with a billion users) asked me if I wanted to use o3, 4o, 4o-mini, o4-mini, gpt-4.1, gpt-4.1-mini, or gpt-4.5 (Research Preview).
I like "Proverb" as smaller than Haiku too, Aphorism is also good. But seriously I want Anthropic to up its small model game. Haiku is not competitive, Deepseek v4 flash outperforms my uses for about $0.10 / $0.20. Whereas Haiku 4.5 is $1/$5.
IMO Anthropic should just play the game at all the price tiers because it otherwise forces people to go elsewhere. I would probably pay for a "Proverb"/"Aphorism" class model that was worse than Deepseek at the same price just to stay in the ecosystem, if given the option.
(Note: I also see Google seem to make the same mistake, they actually do have competitive models in Gemma family but they don't make them available via the API. So there may be some reason for this.)
This is a well executed joke, from the design to the shortness to the being on point to the abrupt punchlines when one looks at the lower ones and it also vibes well with what we all were thinking anyway, and the unexpected seriousness of the title.
- Serial (produces an incredibly exciting response which ends in a cliffhanger that withholds the answer)
- Prequel (instead of responding, it provides the full backstory leading up to your question)
- Yarn (maximizes output tokens by taking a long winding route to your answer)
- Head Canon (answers using its own entertainingly weird theories about the input)
- Overstory (your answer is interwoven with the answers from eight other users into a larger and deeply intertwined meta-answer)
- Oeuvre (for every question, it produces a diverse but cohesive body of work across a variety of mediums, each one a heartbreaking masterpiece in its own right)
I miss Iain M Banks. Thanks for this lovely little nod to the Culture
I don't find any reason to switch back to Anthropic, and they seem to be find with it...
"Fable" is not the name I would have chosen for a product that has to argue for the fact of its own economic viability but it is the correct mood. Perhaps Anthropic is trolling Zitron.
It's a pity that Samsung isn't in the mix. I would have liked to have used a model named Samsung Galaxy S10+ 5G Lite.
- Parable: Responds to the question that you didn't know you needed to ask.
- Bible: Dozens of parable instances reporting in different epochs. Tokens are redeemed on expiry.
- Opus is OP, like OverPowered
- Sonnet is SO, like your significant other (this was more meaningful in Sonnet 3.7 days)
- Haiku is HA, like the reaction to a bad joke
The latest model, naturally, needed three letters: FAB.
I'm now looking forward to ABS and LO
IMO Anthropic should just play the game at all the price tiers because it otherwise forces people to go elsewhere. I would probably pay for a "Proverb"/"Aphorism" class model that was worse than Deepseek at the same price just to stay in the ecosystem, if given the option.
(Note: I also see Google seem to make the same mistake, they actually do have competitive models in Gemma family but they don't make them available via the API. So there may be some reason for this.)
Vicious, but true. SWE at my company immediately tried "check my codebase for vulnerabilities" and was immediately downgraded to Opus.
This is a well executed joke, from the design to the shortness to the being on point to the abrupt punchlines when one looks at the lower ones and it also vibes well with what we all were thinking anyway, and the unexpected seriousness of the title.
(great article!)
https://postscript.co/pages/shop-coffee-beans
(Unfortunately just like English a letter can also mean a correspondence.)
PREACH
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos
Hopefully future models will be kind enough not to behave like malevolent gods.
- Claude Skynet
- Claude HAL 9000
- Claude Auto
- Google Claude
- Claude Whatchamacallit
Siri AI !
- Fairytale
- Pulp Fiction
-- Mythos
-- Fable
-- Fantasy
-- Delusion
-- Pareidolia
-- Psychosis