alt Hacker NewsWhy Fable 5.2 and not 5.5?
My hypothesis - OpenAI and Anthropic are locked in battle. Whoever takes a step, the other one mirrors.
Based on this hypothesis, I think we can expect to see a new Astra model soon given the new Fable release.
And it could be that Anthropic released Fable 5.2 and kept 5.5 in reserve, in case the new Astra model performs better than 5.2
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I wonder if the 5.5 one needs even better safeguards that they’re still working on, and they decided to release this one as a stopgap.
Or maybe 5.5 turned out to be kind of disappointing and they’re going to just go for like a 5.6 or 6 next instead.
My hypothesis is the opposite, that they don't have anything better.
Look at OpenAI, they've been outclassed by Opus 5.5 two months ago; obviously they don't yet have a response.
Now Anthropic is releasing this lackluster Fable 5.2, a week or two before their IPO.
It's barely an improvement at all, makes exactly the same mistakes as Opus 5.5. Not even worth using with the speed and cost penalty.
The much rumored internal Anthropic model is listed on the Fable 5.2 system card as an even smaller improvement over Mythos 5.2 than Fable is over Opus 5.5.
I expected a larger version of Opus 5.5 would be a significant improvement to launch before the IPO. Turns out it didn't scale and the improvement is marginal.
I am quite disappointed.
Did you see the METR graph? https://x.com/METR_Evals/status/2118412205662314935?a=G4yBKS... Fable/Mythos 5.2 is Model 3 (METR says); but there's also a Model 4.
Who knows why they are saving it. Maybe it needs more training and alignment? Maybe they're timing the media attention around the IPO.