We take reports about degradation very seriously. We never intentionally degrade our models [...] On March 4, we changed Claude Code's default reasoning effort from high to medium
Anthropic is the best company of its kind, but that is badly worded PR.
Is adding JPEG compression to your software “intentional degradation” of the software? I wouldn't say providing a selectable option to use a faster, cheaper version of something qualifies as “degradation”.
It is certainly true that they did a poor job communicating this change to users (I did not know that the default was “high” before they introduced it, I assumed they had added an effort level both above and below whatever the only effort choice was there before). On the other hand, I was using Claude Code a fair bit on “medium” during that time period and it seemed to be performing just fine for me (and saving usage/time over “high”), so it doesn't seem clear that that was the wrong default, if only it had been explained better.
yes. if instagram started performing intensive JPEG compression that made photos choppy and unpleasant, I would consider that an intentional degredation of the software.
Is default enabling JPEG compression to your software's output because the compression saves you money “intentional degradation” of the software?
I would say it does, and I'd loathe to use anything made by people who'd couch that change to defaults as "providing a selectable option to use a faster, cheaper version".
To my eye, gaslighting is a serious accusation. Wikipedia's first line matches how I think of it: "Gaslighting is the manipulation of someone into questioning their perception of reality."
Did I miss something? I'm only looking at primary sources to start. Not Reddit. Not The Register. Official company communications.
Did Anthropic tell users i.e. "you are wrong, your experience is not worse."? If so, that would reach the bar of gaslighting, as I understand it (and I'm not alone). If you have a different understanding, please share what it is so I understand what you mean.
I'd rather not speak too poorly of Anthropic, because - to the extent I can bring myself to like a tech company - I like Anthropic.
That said, the copy uses "we never intentionally degrade our models" to mean something like "we never degrade one facet of our models unless it improves some other facet of our models". This is a cop out, because it is what users suspected and complained about. What users want - regardless of whether it is realistic to expect - is for Anthropic to buy even more compute than Anthropic already does, so that the models remain equally smart even if the service demand increases.
They didn’t say “your experience is not worse” but they did frequently say “just turn reasoning effort back up and it will be fine”. And that pretty explicitly invalidates all the (correct) feedback which said it’s not just reasoning effort.
They knew they had deliberately made their system worse, despite their lame promise published today that they would never do such a thing. And so they incorrectly assumed that their ham fisted policy blunder was the only problem.
Still plenty I prefer about Claude over GPT but this really stings.
I know some people use the word "gaslighting" in connection with Anthropic. I've read some of those threads here, and some on Reddit, but I don't put much stock in them. To step back, hopefully reasonable people can start here:
1. Degraded service sucks.
2. Anthropic not saying i.e. "we're not seeing it" sucks.
3. Not getting a fix when you want it sucks.
Try to understand what I mean when I say none of the above meet the following sense of gaslighting: "Gaslighting is the manipulation of someone into questioning their perception of reality." Emphasis on understand what I mean. This says it well: [1].
If you can point me to an official communication from Anthropic where they say "User <so and so> is not actually seeing degraded performance" when Anthropic knows otherwise that would clearly be gaslighting -- intent matters by my book.
But if their instrumentation was bad and they were genuinely reporting what they could see, that doesn't cross into gaslighting by my book. But I have a tendency to think carefully about ethical definitions. Some people just grab a word off the shelf with a negative valence and run with it: I don't put much stock in what those people say. Words are cheap. Good ethical reasoning is hard and valuable.
It's fine if you have a different definition of "gaslighting". Just remember that some of us have been actually gaslight by people, so we prefer to save the word for situations where the original definition applies. People like us are not opposed to being disappointed, upset, or angry at Anthropic, but we have certain epistemic standards that we don't toss out when an important tool fails to meet our expectations and the company behind it doesn't recognize it soon enough.
And still are gaslighting:
Anthropic is the best company of its kind, but that is badly worded PR.
Is adding JPEG compression to your software “intentional degradation” of the software? I wouldn't say providing a selectable option to use a faster, cheaper version of something qualifies as “degradation”.
It is certainly true that they did a poor job communicating this change to users (I did not know that the default was “high” before they introduced it, I assumed they had added an effort level both above and below whatever the only effort choice was there before). On the other hand, I was using Claude Code a fair bit on “medium” during that time period and it seemed to be performing just fine for me (and saving usage/time over “high”), so it doesn't seem clear that that was the wrong default, if only it had been explained better.
yes. if instagram started performing intensive JPEG compression that made photos choppy and unpleasant, I would consider that an intentional degredation of the software.
Is default enabling JPEG compression to your software's output because the compression saves you money “intentional degradation” of the software?
I would say it does, and I'd loathe to use anything made by people who'd couch that change to defaults as "providing a selectable option to use a faster, cheaper version".
Yuck.
To my eye, gaslighting is a serious accusation. Wikipedia's first line matches how I think of it: "Gaslighting is the manipulation of someone into questioning their perception of reality."
Did I miss something? I'm only looking at primary sources to start. Not Reddit. Not The Register. Official company communications.
Did Anthropic tell users i.e. "you are wrong, your experience is not worse."? If so, that would reach the bar of gaslighting, as I understand it (and I'm not alone). If you have a different understanding, please share what it is so I understand what you mean.
I'd rather not speak too poorly of Anthropic, because - to the extent I can bring myself to like a tech company - I like Anthropic.
That said, the copy uses "we never intentionally degrade our models" to mean something like "we never degrade one facet of our models unless it improves some other facet of our models". This is a cop out, because it is what users suspected and complained about. What users want - regardless of whether it is realistic to expect - is for Anthropic to buy even more compute than Anthropic already does, so that the models remain equally smart even if the service demand increases.
2 replies →
I think there are plenty of such reply on github. For example the one to AMD AI director's issue.
They didn’t say “your experience is not worse” but they did frequently say “just turn reasoning effort back up and it will be fine”. And that pretty explicitly invalidates all the (correct) feedback which said it’s not just reasoning effort.
They knew they had deliberately made their system worse, despite their lame promise published today that they would never do such a thing. And so they incorrectly assumed that their ham fisted policy blunder was the only problem.
Still plenty I prefer about Claude over GPT but this really stings.
2 replies →
I know some people use the word "gaslighting" in connection with Anthropic. I've read some of those threads here, and some on Reddit, but I don't put much stock in them. To step back, hopefully reasonable people can start here:
Try to understand what I mean when I say none of the above meet the following sense of gaslighting: "Gaslighting is the manipulation of someone into questioning their perception of reality." Emphasis on understand what I mean. This says it well: [1].
If you can point me to an official communication from Anthropic where they say "User <so and so> is not actually seeing degraded performance" when Anthropic knows otherwise that would clearly be gaslighting -- intent matters by my book.
But if their instrumentation was bad and they were genuinely reporting what they could see, that doesn't cross into gaslighting by my book. But I have a tendency to think carefully about ethical definitions. Some people just grab a word off the shelf with a negative valence and run with it: I don't put much stock in what those people say. Words are cheap. Good ethical reasoning is hard and valuable.
It's fine if you have a different definition of "gaslighting". Just remember that some of us have been actually gaslight by people, so we prefer to save the word for situations where the original definition applies. People like us are not opposed to being disappointed, upset, or angry at Anthropic, but we have certain epistemic standards that we don't toss out when an important tool fails to meet our expectations and the company behind it doesn't recognize it soon enough.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/tep32v/can...