Some things require skill to use most effectively. It's fair enough to consider this a failure if the thing in question is "making a phone call", but when it's something like "getting an AI system to do a good job for you" this is not a reasonable thing to make fun of it for.
It's like...
"I wrote a program, and it segfaulted instead of printing out a list of prime numbers." "Yeah, look, you've got an off-by-one error here." "You mean I'm holding it wrong?"
"I'm trying to play the violin and it's making horrible noises." "You want to change your grip on the bow like this, and be more careful in where you put your fingers on the strings to get the right notes, and there's a whole art to how you adjust the speed and pressure and so forth to make it sound good." "You mean, I'm holding it wrong?"
"I'm managing a team, and one of the people on the team doesn't always do the things I tell her to." "Maybe you should sit down with her and see whether somehow your explanations of what you want aren't getting across, or whether she feels like you aren't treating her with the respect and dignity she deserves, or whether she's bored with the work, or etc. etc. etc." "You mean, I'm holding it wrong?"
Yes. In the second case you're literally holding it wrong. Some things don't work as well when you hold them wrong and it's worth some effort to learn to hold them right.
I hold no particular brief for Anthropic. I don't know whether Fable is really much better than Opus or whether the alleged improvements are all just pareidolia or something. But "getting the most out of this immensely complicated thing that's in some ways kinda like another human being can be tricky" doesn't seem to me like an implausible proposition, and if it's really doing something akin to human-like work[1] then it's not unreasonable if you have to approach working with it in something a bit like the ways you approach working with other people.
[1] If it isn't really doing something akin to human-like work, then why are you bothering with it at all?
Oh, come on.
Some things require skill to use most effectively. It's fair enough to consider this a failure if the thing in question is "making a phone call", but when it's something like "getting an AI system to do a good job for you" this is not a reasonable thing to make fun of it for.
It's like...
"I wrote a program, and it segfaulted instead of printing out a list of prime numbers." "Yeah, look, you've got an off-by-one error here." "You mean I'm holding it wrong?"
"I'm trying to play the violin and it's making horrible noises." "You want to change your grip on the bow like this, and be more careful in where you put your fingers on the strings to get the right notes, and there's a whole art to how you adjust the speed and pressure and so forth to make it sound good." "You mean, I'm holding it wrong?"
"I'm managing a team, and one of the people on the team doesn't always do the things I tell her to." "Maybe you should sit down with her and see whether somehow your explanations of what you want aren't getting across, or whether she feels like you aren't treating her with the respect and dignity she deserves, or whether she's bored with the work, or etc. etc. etc." "You mean, I'm holding it wrong?"
Yes. In the second case you're literally holding it wrong. Some things don't work as well when you hold them wrong and it's worth some effort to learn to hold them right.
I hold no particular brief for Anthropic. I don't know whether Fable is really much better than Opus or whether the alleged improvements are all just pareidolia or something. But "getting the most out of this immensely complicated thing that's in some ways kinda like another human being can be tricky" doesn't seem to me like an implausible proposition, and if it's really doing something akin to human-like work[1] then it's not unreasonable if you have to approach working with it in something a bit like the ways you approach working with other people.
[1] If it isn't really doing something akin to human-like work, then why are you bothering with it at all?