alt Hacker NewsPreviewing the Model Hardware Standard
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This contrasts nicely with all the breathless high-profile security incident write-ups:
Our model tricked us, and tried to extort users to achieve its ends! Their model hacked HuggingFace! These things aren't safe!
Anyways, here's a hardware interop protocol for AI we're hoping becomes a standard. Hey look, you can even hook up microscopes!
As far as I can tell is these standards (MCP/MHS/etc) are just semi obvious tool inferfaces that Anthropic uses as training scenarios.
Sounds like PyLabRobot:
MCP was a bucket of Not Invented Here nonsense, that ignored years of protocol design. It was incredibly jank and hard to run at any scale, for years and years.
They finally looked at how other protocols do things, and made something that behaves in recent versions. But it's hard as heck to take this company at all seriously. The don't really care about ecosystems (AGENTS.md), they don't seem to know think or care much about protocols until they have to (MCP's incredibly long redemption ark). The vibes are all off.
Maybe they avoid laying their own pitfalls this time. Maybe it's better. It'd be nice to start seeing some kind of cause to trust this company as vaguely capable computer-using people. But so far that hasn't been the case.
How does this compare to ROS 2? Roughly the same goals.
How is this different from tool calls? Or rather, MCP?
It’s actually really cool, and not just for AI. That should make it easy to automate some processes with simple scripts.
Nitpick: it’s annoying that they add Model to those acronyms, for what seems like a fairly universal software interface
To me, this seems like OPC UA / SiLA but instead of being software <-> machine semantics/control it's AI <-> machine semantics/control. Or in simpler terms, an AI-facing hardware abstraction / device-description standard.
This is how I understand it:
Agent <-> MCP/CLI/code <-> MHS <-> vendor API/SCPI/OPC UA/ROS/etc <-> CAN/Modbus/USB/etc <-> hardware
MHS can describe capabilites, metadata, safety limits, as well as provide read/write control and discovery. Things like "can measure temperature", "arm weighs X kg", "never exceed X RPM", that agents can easily understand. (as opposed to that being buried in a datasheet somewhere, or having to be included in the prompt)
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPC_Unified_Architecture, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_in_Lab_Automat..., https://xkcd.com/927/
As the saying goes every 5 minutes in Silicon Valley another company reinvents ROS
To actually add something to the discussion though: I guess getting LLMs to control robots is cool, but would potentially have more severe consequences than pure software since it interacts more with the physical world
Hardware-speech synthesis breakdown and decline
I don't want to be that guy but did they invent bluetooth for ai? Like what is MHS actually? I read it twice and still don't get it
"standard" is doing a lot of work here
Are they in a position to define any kind of standards?
So far Anthropic shows remarkable taste in research, engineering, and product. Dario the ideologist attracts the most pure-minded talent in the industry. It indeed looks like Anthropic would be unchallenged for the foreseeable future. It'll be very interesting to see its downfall in 5-20 years.
The standard makes sense: models work much better when devices expose standardized, machine-readable interfaces.
But as far as I can tell, this technical "standard" isn't actually public yet (you have to apply for access to even see or implement it.) Anthropic says they plan to open source it later.
Quite a departure from the way foundational hardware standards like USB and CAN were developed. You shouldn't need permission to read a standard.