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And still are gaslighting: We take reports about degradation very seriously. We never intentionally degrade our models [...] On March 4, we changed Claude Co

And still are gaslighting: We take reports about degradation very seriously. We never intentionally degrade our models [...] On March 4, we changed Claude Code's default reasoning effort from high to medium Anthropic is the best company of its kind, but that is badly worded PR.

xpe 6mo ago
To my eye, gaslighting is a serious accusation. Wikipedia's first line matches how I think of it: "Gaslighting is the manipulation of someone into questioning their perception of reality." Did I miss something? I'm only looking at primary sources to start. Not Reddit. Not The Register. Official company communications. Did Anthropic tell users i.e. "you are wrong, your experience is not worse."? If so, that would reach the bar of gaslighting, as I understand it (and I'm not alone). If you have a different understanding, please share what it is so I understand what you mean.
- thomassmith65 6mo ago
  I'd rather not speak too poorly of Anthropic, because - to the extent I can bring myself to like a tech company - I like Anthropic. That said, the copy uses "we never intentionally degrade our models" to mean something like "we never degrade one facet of our models unless it improves some other facet of our models". This is a cop out, because it is what users suspected and complained about. What users want - regardless of whether it is realistic to expect - is for Anthropic to buy even more compute than Anthropic already does, so that the models remain equally smart even if the service demand increases.
  - xpe 6mo ago
    It seems to me you dropped the "gaslighting" claim without owning it. I personally find this frustrating. I prefer when people own up to their mistakes. Like many people, to me, "gaslighting" is just not a term you throw around lightly. Then you shifted to "cop out". (This feels like the motte and bailey.) But I don't think "cop out" is a phrase that works either... Some terms:... The model is the thing that runs inference. Claude Code is not a model, it is harness. To summarize Anthropic's recent retrospective, their technical mistakes were about the harness. I'm not here to 'defend' Anthropic's mistakes. They messed up technically. And their communication could have been better. But they didn't gaslight. And on balance, I don't see net evidence that they've "copped out" (by which I mean mischaracterized what happened). I see more evidence of the opposite. I could be wrong about any of this, but I'm here to talk about it in the clearest, best way I can. If anyone wants to point to primary sources, I'll read them. I want more people to actually spend a few minutes and actually give the explanation offered by Anthropic a try. What if isolating the problems was hard to figure out? We all know hindsight is 20/20 and yet people still armchair quarterback. At the risk of sounding preachy, I'm here to say "people, we need to do better". Hacker News is a special place, but we lose it a little bit every time we don't in a quality effort.
    - thomassmith65 6mo ago
      Fair enough. If the comments in question were still editable, I would be happy to replace 'gaslighting' with 'being a bit slippery' or something less controversial. No worries about 'sounding preachy'; it's a good thing people want to uphold the sobriety that makes HN special.
- oofbey 6mo ago
  They didn’t say “your experience is not worse” but they did frequently say “just turn reasoning effort back up and it will be fine”. And that pretty explicitly invalidates all the (correct) feedback which said it’s not just reasoning effort. They knew they had deliberately made their system worse, despite their lame promise published today that they would never do such a thing. And so they incorrectly assumed that their ham fisted policy blunder was the only problem. Still plenty I prefer about Claude over GPT but this really stings.
  - xpe 6mo ago
    I'm aiming for intellectual honesty here. I'm not taking a side for a person or an org, but I'm taking a stand for a quality bar. > They knew they had deliberately made their system worse Define "they". The teams that made particular changes? In real-world organizations, not all relevant information flows to all the right places at the right time. Mistakes happen because these are complex systems. Define "worse". There are lot of factors involved. With a given amount of capacity at a given time, some aspect of "quality" has to give. So "quality" is a judgment call. It is easy to use a non-charitable definition to "gotcha" someone. (Some concepts are inherently indefensible. Sometimes you just can't win. "Quality" is one of those things. As soon as I define quality one way, you can attack me by defining it another way. A particular version of this principle is explained in The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian, by the way, regarding predictive policing iirc.) I'm seeing a lot of moral outrage but not enough intellectual curiosity. It embarrassingly easy to say "they should have done better" ... ok. Until someone demonstrates to me they understand the complexity of a nearly-billion dollar company rapidly scaling with new technology, growing faster than most people comprehend, I think ... they are just complaining and cooking up reasons so they are right in feeling that way. This possible truth: complex systems are hard to do well apparently doesn't scratch that itch for many people. So they reach for blame. This is not the way to learn. Blaming tends to cut off curiosity. I suggest this instead: redirect if you can to "what makes these things so complicated?" and go learn about that. You'll be happier, smarter, and ... most importantly ... be building a habit that will serve you well in life. Take it from an old guy who is late to the game on this. I've bailed on companies because "I thought I knew better". :/
- asdewqqwer 6mo ago
  I think there are plenty of such reply on github. For example the one to AMD AI director's issue.
  - xpe 6mo ago
    Please link us to it. Linking it provides an anchor for community discussion.
sobjornstad 6mo ago
Is adding JPEG compression to your software “intentional degradation” of the software? I wouldn't say providing a selectable option to use a faster, cheaper version of something qualifies as “degradation”. It is certainly true that they did a poor job communicating this change to users (I did not know that the default was “high” before they introduced it, I assumed they had added an effort level both above and below whatever the only effort choice was there before). On the other hand, I was using Claude Code a fair bit on “medium” during that time period and it seemed to be performing just fine for me (and saving usage/time over “high”), so it doesn't seem clear that that was the wrong default, if only it had been explained better.
- BoorishBears 6mo ago
  Is default enabling JPEG compression to your software's output because the compression saves you money “intentional degradation” of the software? I would say it does, and I'd loathe to use anything made by people who'd couch that change to defaults as "providing a selectable option to use a faster, cheaper version". Yuck.
- endymion-light 6mo ago
  yes. if instagram started performing intensive JPEG compression that made photos choppy and unpleasant, I would consider that an intentional degredation of the software.
- xpe 6mo ago
  As I understand Anthropic's recent retrospective, calling the models directly via API did not change; the problem was that the harness changed and this was not communicated well to users. Metaphorical reasoning is lossy, so talking about lossy image compression seems to be ironically fitting! ... perhaps a (hypothetical) metaphor involves Photoshop changing their default JPEG compression level without making it clear to users. PS did not change the JPEG algorithm, only a setting for it. If you look closely, you would notice it: I'll come back to this point in the last paragraph. But a part of metaphor breaks down if you accept that Anthropic was making a net positive trade-off for customers so that they could provide a better overall service level statistically to their entire user base. A rough metaphor for the individual versus collective trade-off might be when a retail store caps the number of toilet paper rolls customer can buy at a time. The goal is to reduce hoarding, which in a way is an analogous to Claude users having usage patterns at the high end of the statistical tail. When it comes to PR*, transparency almost always wins? Anthropic's mistake hid the change from users, but they're going to notice when overall performance is degraded. I would hazard a guess that Claude has endured more verbal assault in the last month than in its entire history. * both for public relations and pull requests

xpe 6mo ago

To my eye, gaslighting is a serious accusation. Wikipedia's first line matches how I think of it: "Gaslighting is the manipulation of someone into questioning their perception of reality." Did I miss something? I'm only looking at primary sources to start. Not Reddit. Not The Register. Official company communications. Did Anthropic tell users i.e. "you are wrong, your experience is not worse."? If so, that would reach the bar of gaslighting, as I understand it (and I'm not alone). If you have a different understanding, please share what it is so I understand what you mean.

thomassmith65 6mo ago
I'd rather not speak too poorly of Anthropic, because - to the extent I can bring myself to like a tech company - I like Anthropic. That said, the copy uses "we never intentionally degrade our models" to mean something like "we never degrade one facet of our models unless it improves some other facet of our models". This is a cop out, because it is what users suspected and complained about. What users want - regardless of whether it is realistic to expect - is for Anthropic to buy even more compute than Anthropic already does, so that the models remain equally smart even if the service demand increases.
- xpe 6mo ago
  It seems to me you dropped the "gaslighting" claim without owning it. I personally find this frustrating. I prefer when people own up to their mistakes. Like many people, to me, "gaslighting" is just not a term you throw around lightly. Then you shifted to "cop out". (This feels like the motte and bailey.) But I don't think "cop out" is a phrase that works either... Some terms:... The model is the thing that runs inference. Claude Code is not a model, it is harness. To summarize Anthropic's recent retrospective, their technical mistakes were about the harness. I'm not here to 'defend' Anthropic's mistakes. They messed up technically. And their communication could have been better. But they didn't gaslight. And on balance, I don't see net evidence that they've "copped out" (by which I mean mischaracterized what happened). I see more evidence of the opposite. I could be wrong about any of this, but I'm here to talk about it in the clearest, best way I can. If anyone wants to point to primary sources, I'll read them. I want more people to actually spend a few minutes and actually give the explanation offered by Anthropic a try. What if isolating the problems was hard to figure out? We all know hindsight is 20/20 and yet people still armchair quarterback. At the risk of sounding preachy, I'm here to say "people, we need to do better". Hacker News is a special place, but we lose it a little bit every time we don't in a quality effort.
  - thomassmith65 6mo ago
    Fair enough. If the comments in question were still editable, I would be happy to replace 'gaslighting' with 'being a bit slippery' or something less controversial. No worries about 'sounding preachy'; it's a good thing people want to uphold the sobriety that makes HN special.
oofbey 6mo ago
They didn’t say “your experience is not worse” but they did frequently say “just turn reasoning effort back up and it will be fine”. And that pretty explicitly invalidates all the (correct) feedback which said it’s not just reasoning effort. They knew they had deliberately made their system worse, despite their lame promise published today that they would never do such a thing. And so they incorrectly assumed that their ham fisted policy blunder was the only problem. Still plenty I prefer about Claude over GPT but this really stings.
- xpe 6mo ago
  I'm aiming for intellectual honesty here. I'm not taking a side for a person or an org, but I'm taking a stand for a quality bar. > They knew they had deliberately made their system worse Define "they". The teams that made particular changes? In real-world organizations, not all relevant information flows to all the right places at the right time. Mistakes happen because these are complex systems. Define "worse". There are lot of factors involved. With a given amount of capacity at a given time, some aspect of "quality" has to give. So "quality" is a judgment call. It is easy to use a non-charitable definition to "gotcha" someone. (Some concepts are inherently indefensible. Sometimes you just can't win. "Quality" is one of those things. As soon as I define quality one way, you can attack me by defining it another way. A particular version of this principle is explained in The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian, by the way, regarding predictive policing iirc.) I'm seeing a lot of moral outrage but not enough intellectual curiosity. It embarrassingly easy to say "they should have done better" ... ok. Until someone demonstrates to me they understand the complexity of a nearly-billion dollar company rapidly scaling with new technology, growing faster than most people comprehend, I think ... they are just complaining and cooking up reasons so they are right in feeling that way. This possible truth: complex systems are hard to do well apparently doesn't scratch that itch for many people. So they reach for blame. This is not the way to learn. Blaming tends to cut off curiosity. I suggest this instead: redirect if you can to "what makes these things so complicated?" and go learn about that. You'll be happier, smarter, and ... most importantly ... be building a habit that will serve you well in life. Take it from an old guy who is late to the game on this. I've bailed on companies because "I thought I knew better". :/
asdewqqwer 6mo ago
I think there are plenty of such reply on github. For example the one to AMD AI director's issue.
- xpe 6mo ago
  Please link us to it. Linking it provides an anchor for community discussion.

sobjornstad 6mo ago

Is adding JPEG compression to your software “intentional degradation” of the software? I wouldn't say providing a selectable option to use a faster, cheaper version of something qualifies as “degradation”. It is certainly true that they did a poor job communicating this change to users (I did not know that the default was “high” before they introduced it, I assumed they had added an effort level both above and below whatever the only effort choice was there before). On the other hand, I was using Claude Code a fair bit on “medium” during that time period and it seemed to be performing just fine for me (and saving usage/time over “high”), so it doesn't seem clear that that was the wrong default, if only it had been explained better.

BoorishBears 6mo ago
Is default enabling JPEG compression to your software's output because the compression saves you money “intentional degradation” of the software? I would say it does, and I'd loathe to use anything made by people who'd couch that change to defaults as "providing a selectable option to use a faster, cheaper version". Yuck.
endymion-light 6mo ago
yes. if instagram started performing intensive JPEG compression that made photos choppy and unpleasant, I would consider that an intentional degredation of the software.
xpe 6mo ago
As I understand Anthropic's recent retrospective, calling the models directly via API did not change; the problem was that the harness changed and this was not communicated well to users. Metaphorical reasoning is lossy, so talking about lossy image compression seems to be ironically fitting! ... perhaps a (hypothetical) metaphor involves Photoshop changing their default JPEG compression level without making it clear to users. PS did not change the JPEG algorithm, only a setting for it. If you look closely, you would notice it: I'll come back to this point in the last paragraph. But a part of metaphor breaks down if you accept that Anthropic was making a net positive trade-off for customers so that they could provide a better overall service level statistically to their entire user base. A rough metaphor for the individual versus collective trade-off might be when a retail store caps the number of toilet paper rolls customer can buy at a time. The goal is to reduce hoarding, which in a way is an analogous to Claude users having usage patterns at the high end of the statistical tail. When it comes to PR*, transparency almost always wins? Anthropic's mistake hid the change from users, but they're going to notice when overall performance is degraded. I would hazard a guess that Claude has endured more verbal assault in the last month than in its entire history. * both for public relations and pull requests