On Thursday, Anthropic released Opus 4.8, the newest version of its most advanced publicly available model. The model is available everywhere, with standard pricing at the same level as the previous Opus release. The new model comes just 41 days after Opus 4.7 was released, a much faster upgrade cycle than normal for Anthropic. (The most recent Sonnet and Haiku models are three and seven months old, respectively.) The fast turnaround may have something to do with the chilly reception to Opus 4.7, which some users found disappointing. Opus 4.8 comes with the expected best-in-class benchmark results, but there's also particular attention to how the model manages bad or uncertain data. In the launch post, Anthropic's early testers found that the new model is 'more likely to flag uncertainties about its work and less likely to make unsupported claims.' Echoing this point, a testimonial from Bridgewater associates said the biggest difference in the upgrade was 'Opus 4.8's tendency to...
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