All this is happening because many Silicon Valley CEOs are totally disconnected from humanity. I actually dont think Mark even sees his employees as human beings but rather as training data from a future where AI agents will just replace most of his workforce.
Regardless of wether this is right or wrong, and not even getting into the correctness of such claims, the fact is that he fired 10000 employees, from what used to be, from the outside, an engineering first company. And he sent hints to the market that more layoffs would come as agents become better.
The first problem is: it looks we still need human beings, AI is great, but its not as awesome as we initially thought.
The second problem is: all people who can leave are leaving, and those who can't are looking for a job. Humans, we need stability, a steady flow of income, and joy in what we do. By firing people and putting them in permanent observation, for an AI that will replace them, he is destroying any reason anybody would ever want to work for such a company.
He never had WhatsApp. He refuses to use google. Only till recently he started using signal. He has been using an old Nokia phone till he was forced to upgrade by his operator. He is European and here in Europe WhatsApp dominates. Despite all that and having a very social life, driven by work, he manages.
I recently ordered a Jolla phone. I don’t want to know about android. I might tolerate iOS. But shelling thousands of $ for a phone that is controlled by an external company…
I am looking out for messaging alternatives. I am at a point where I think linking your identity to a phone number is not right either.
Let’s say we should all wake the fuck up. This is not right. Having a phone with such spyware is a potential attack vector I don’t want to have on the most important device I own.
The tokenizer is 30% more expensive (it generates 30% more tokens) just they are giving an offer now which will end by end of August. On max effort its way more expensive than Opus and slightly less than fable.
It has also strong guardrails and deliberate reduced training data around cybersecurity. On purpose. If you develop a system and then try to harden it, it will miserably fail.
It’s a neutered model. Pretty sure not what they had in mind, but they have to, since they invested so much VC money in developing it.
This. I have been using anthropic and codex subs, on max. All this changed in June. We are clearly entering an era where we cannot rely on American models. As a solo developer I value reliability over performance. I cannot pay hundred of $, plus a lot of my private time figuring out how to properly use this technology, for it to be taken away within hours.
On top of that, the intelligence is being dialed down. Sonet 5 is a living proof of this. Fable has strong guardrails, but new Sonet is a dumbed down expensive model, which already falls behind GLM 5.2 and Kimi 2.7. I might go back to Claude since I know Fable is just a limited offer, and I am not going to pay for API usage. But what they are signaling with Sonet will also come to Opus. A lobotomized more expensive model.
I am honestly baffled how the current administration is giving the whole world, on a golden plate, to China. And they don't seem too bothered about it. They are living in their own bubble and reality distortion field I guess.
I could go on endless rant about Dario, but I feel I am so strongly biased now that my judgement might be clouded.
I would say 3.5 flash is great if you use a good open harness. I use omp for that. The thing with Google is that they announce they have a great model, and that they have been testing it internally for half a year. I guess they don't care too much about who or how he uses it.
I am still struggling how to deal with sub agents and different roles for each model. I still think Claude or Codex are overall better models, but everything around them transpires such weird vibes, including, and this one kills me, that at certain times they feel like dumbed down.
I keep changing these things often, but I have basic subscription to codex (20$ plan) which I use with GLM 5.2 to do some high level planning of what I intend to do, and then leave Deepseek do the coding. Or something along those lines.
Point is, GLM 5.2 is now at a point where I cannot tell you if it's better or worse. I can tell you however one thing: no matter when I use it, it's consistent in what it does and how it works.
Then there is the Fable thing, but as with many things, I think the past has distorted the reality. It lasted two days, but Anthropic said it clearly for plan users it would only be there for two weeks. It was great for doing what you can already do with other tools: doing all the planning, and reviews, and launching a million subagents talking to each other. I sometimes wonder if it was really a new model, or just Opus 4.9 wrapped with some fancy model driven harness.
To be fair with Codex, you can use any harness you want with it. Access is not gatekeeper by a crappy full of slop electron app.
So just move to PI, or whatever.
Claude on the contrary, forces all plan users to use their horrible app, which, if you ever dared to use cowork, only once, will run a 2GB VM on app start, no f's given. at all.
Not justifying it. But if you use the official Codex app, thats on you. If you use the official Claude app, it's because you are forced to.
Sidenote unrelated to the post: since the Fable thing, and after serious thinking, I moved to open source models. I still have the basic OpenAI sub, but then easy lifting is now done elsewhere.
Anthropic employees are right, but maybe this is for good. It certainly has opened my eyes.
I can’t rely on using a technology that the US administration can ban at will.
IMO without getting into personal thoughts about how capable the current US administration is, last Friday move sent a very powerful signal to the industry.
Also I don’t think China releasing so many good models, capable to compete with Opus 4.8 and GPT 5.5, all at once, is a coincidence.
Anthropic has been trying to be a trust me bro and an I know better than you steward. All while Dario has been crying wolf since 2017. Not that I like the current administration. They are horrible human beings. But this effective altruism first from SBF and now from Amodei kills me too.
There is nothing worse than very highly intellectual people thinking they are entitled to make decisions for the rest of us.
They fully own this. They have built a narrative so powerful that now the government is going to shut them down.
Meanwhile OpenAI, who own their own data centers, infrastructure government officials, and are being smart about all this, will reap some of the benefits. They are loosing too.
Anthropic did indeed dig their own grave, and it saddens me. Fable was an amazing model. First of its kind. I will miss it.
Still let’s not forget: this was a two week trial. After that it would have been over, except for the enterprise customers.
Apologies for the tone of my post. It’s not easy to be neutral and unbiased. I am just so angry at all this nonsense. At home I got kids, and they are more mature than many of these people who are just ruling over the world.
Regardless of wether this is right or wrong, and not even getting into the correctness of such claims, the fact is that he fired 10000 employees, from what used to be, from the outside, an engineering first company. And he sent hints to the market that more layoffs would come as agents become better.
The first problem is: it looks we still need human beings, AI is great, but its not as awesome as we initially thought.
The second problem is: all people who can leave are leaving, and those who can't are looking for a job. Humans, we need stability, a steady flow of income, and joy in what we do. By firing people and putting them in permanent observation, for an AI that will replace them, he is destroying any reason anybody would ever want to work for such a company.
Mark would make a great Lumon CEO