That’s true. I suspect a lot of it has do to with model training veering towards a heavier focus on code and math and things the labs care about—they’re their own primary customers in many ways. I do think the largest models have still improved a little—Fable writes better than Opus or Sonnet—but if anything I feel like in each generation, all but the largest models stay constant or get worse on writing as they optimize their skillsets towards the things needed for technical work instead. IDK if any lab is really trying to optimize for good writing?
I will say with agents, I can get much better quality of prose output if I define a structure and style guide, than I could before, or than I can with chatbot interfaces. I have some setups where Fable codes up rules and tests defining what good looks like --> Opus orchestrates divvying work up --> Sonnet conducts the secondary research and organizes the input data needed --> Haiku outputs in the specified format, and the results have gotten dramatically better, faster, and cheaper over the past few months. Doesn’t mean Haiku can write a good novel, but a structured brief, yes.
That’s true. I suspect a lot of it has do to with model training veering towards a heavier focus on code and math and things the labs care about—they’re their own primary customers in many ways. I do think the largest models have still improved a little—Fable writes better than Opus or Sonnet—but if anything I feel like in each generation, all but the largest models stay constant or get worse on writing as they optimize their skillsets towards the things needed for technical work instead. IDK if any lab is really trying to optimize for good writing?
I will say with agents, I can get much better quality of prose output if I define a structure and style guide, than I could before, or than I can with chatbot interfaces. I have some setups where Fable codes up rules and tests defining what good looks like --> Opus orchestrates divvying work up --> Sonnet conducts the secondary research and organizes the input data needed --> Haiku outputs in the specified format, and the results have gotten dramatically better, faster, and cheaper over the past few months. Doesn’t mean Haiku can write a good novel, but a structured brief, yes.