Anthropic’s best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive
Anthropic's flagship models Fable 5 and Opus 5 see only 8% and 3.5% adoption respectively, as enterprises prioritize cost-effective older models, marking a shift from peak performance to ROI-driven AI adoption.
Simon Willison · Aug 24, 2026
Qwen 3.8 27B scores 52 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
The Qwen 3.8 27B model matches the scores of trillion-parameter giants like GPT-5.6 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, revealing new possibilities for smaller models to achieve 'dimensionality reduction strikes' on specific tasks.
Simon Willison · Aug 18, 2026
AI and Liability
A German court ruling holds Google liable for errors in its AI overviews, reinforcing that AI agents are extensions of their deployers, and companies cannot hide behind faulty AI to avoid responsibility.
Simon Willison · Jun 26, 2026
Scaling Laws, Carefully
AI researcher Lilian Weng provides a deep analysis of the evolution of scaling laws, highlighting common pitfalls in practice and emphasizing the critical role of data quality and allocation.
Lilian Weng · Jun 24, 2026
Microsoft's new MAI models
Simon Willison delves into Microsoft's new MAI models, revealing that despite claims of 'clean licensed data', the training process still relies on web crawls, sparking discussion on AI copyright issues.
Simon Willison · Jun 3, 2026
I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline
Veteran open-source contributor Chad Whitacre is leaving the tech industry entirely due to the alienation caused by AI, choosing to become 'AI Amish' and return to an offline life, sparking deep reflection on technological accelerationism and personal digital well-being.
Simon Willison · May 31, 2026
Anthropic's run-rate revenue hits $47 billion
Anthropic's annualized revenue has surged from $30 billion to $47 billion in just a few months, an unprecedented growth rate that reveals enterprise AI adoption is happening at an extraordinary speed.
Simon Willison · May 29, 2026
Claude Opus 4.8: "a modest but tangible improvement"
Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.8, focusing not on performance leaps but on significantly improving model 'honesty' — less hallucination, more willingness to admit uncertainty, which may be a more important direction than benchmark scores.
Simon Willison · May 29, 2026
The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
The massive demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) from AI data centers is crowding out production capacity for consumer electronics memory, leading to significant cost increases for devices like smartphones in the coming years.
Simon Willison · May 23, 2026
Gemini 3.5 Flash: more expensive, but Google plan to use it for everything
Google released Gemini 3.5 Flash with a significant price hike, yet simultaneously deployed it across core products like Search and the Gemini app, revealing a shift from pure cost-effectiveness to paying for comprehensive model capabilities.
Simon Willison · May 20, 2026
The last six months in LLMs in five minutes
Simon Willison uses his 'pelican riding a bicycle' test to vividly recap how the 'best model' crown changed hands five times among three major providers in six months, revealing the industry's new phase of rapid-iteration arms race.
Simon Willison · May 19, 2026
Thoughts on GitLab's workforce reduction and structural and strategic decisions
GitLab's radical restructuring reveals a deep trend: AI智能体s are reducing software production costs, forcing companies to shift organizational structures from 'management-heavy' to 'small, autonomous delivery teams'.
Simon Willison · May 12, 2026
Our evaluation of OpenAI's GPT-5.5 cyber capabilities
The UK's AI Security Institute found GPT-5.5's cyber capabilities for finding vulnerabilities are comparable to the leading Claude Mythos model, but its general availability marks a new phase in AI-driven cybersecurity offense and defense.
Simon Willison · May 1, 2026
We need RSS for sharing abundant vibe-coded apps
As AI lowers the barrier to app development, leading to a surge in personal, fragmented 'vibe-coded' apps, we need a new paradigm for app distribution and management, akin to RSS for blogs.
Simon Willison · May 1, 2026
Quoting Matthew Yglesias
Matthew Yglesias's quote highlights two paths for AI-assisted programming: personal 'vibecoding' versus professional software companies using AI to build better products, with the latter being the more sustainable value creation model.
Simon Willison · Apr 28, 2026
Tracking the history of the now-deceased OpenAI Microsoft AGI clause
The removal of an AGI-triggered IP clause in the OpenAI-Microsoft partnership marks a complete shift from idealistic vision to commercial entanglement.
Simon Willison · Apr 28, 2026
Quoting Bobby Holley
Mozilla's CTO reports that using Anthropic's Claude AI, Firefox identified and fixed 271 vulnerabilities in an assessment, marking a shift where AI moves from an 'assistant' to a 'lead' role in security defense.
Simon Willison · Apr 22, 2026
AI and the Future of Cybersecurity: Why Openness Matters
Hugging Face argues that the rise of AI-driven autonomous cybersecurity systems (like Mythos) reveals the critical structural advantage of open source in enabling distributed defense and mitigating risks from closed-source software.
Hugging Face Blog · Apr 21, 2026
Trusted access for the next era of cyber defense
OpenAI launches GPT-5.4-Cyber, a model fine-tuned for defensive cybersecurity, and its "Trusted Access" program, signaling that leading AI companies are making cybersecurity a key battleground while seeking a new balance between safety and openness.
Simon Willison · Apr 15, 2026
Claude is a space to think
Anthropic declares Claude will remain permanently ad-free, arguing that advertising incentives are fundamentally incompatible with the core goal of an AI assistant being genuinely helpful.
Anthropic News ·
From Atari to EVE Online: Building on 15 Years of AI Research in Games
DeepMind reviews its 15-year journey in game AI, highlighting a critical shift: AI is evolving from a 'player' chasing high scores to a 'partner' that understands and interacts naturally, signaling a paradigm shift in game development and experience.
Google DeepMind Blog ·
Inviting hard questions
Anthropic launches an initiative to invite the public’s hardest questions about AI and commits to addressing them, signaling a shift from one-way technology delivery to two-way accountability dialogue amid a deepening social trust crisis.
Anthropic News ·
Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC
Anthropic's confidential S-1 filing signals a pivotal shift as top AI labs enter public markets, reshaping capital allocation and competitive dynamics in the industry.
Anthropic News ·
May 22, 2026AnnouncementsProject Glasswing: An initial update
Anthropic's Project Glasswing, using Claude Mythos Preview, discovered over ten thousand high-severity vulnerabilities in critical global software within a month, shifting the core cybersecurity bottleneck from finding flaws to fixing them.
Anthropic News ·
When an AI Godfather Meets the Pope: A Dialogue on the Soul of Technology
Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah's Vatican speech reveals the deep dilemmas in AI development: conflicts between commercial incentives and safety ethics, unequal global distribution of benefits, and the ultimate question of technology's impact on human flourishing.
Anthropic News ·
Notes on Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on AI
Pope Leo XIV's new encyclical on AI offers profound and accessible insights into AI development from the perspectives of human dignity, labor rights, and ethics.
Simon Willison ·
Quoting Mo Bitar
A satirical TikTok quote reveals the survival anxiety and absurd reality of 'performative automation' in the AI era.
Simon Willison ·