Comment by Closi
19 hours ago
At least there is a simple system - the words 'Mini' and 'Max' are intended to refer to the size of the item (that one is miniature, and the other is their maximum size).
If they were called iPhone 14 Luna and iPhone 16 Sol then this is less clear.
Or on the flipside, if the models were called GPT 6.1 Mini and GPT 6.1 Max, nobody would be arguing about the names being hard to grok. The words 'mini' or 'small' are more descriptive than 'Luna' or 'Terra'.
The problem with that is then you would have GPT 6.1 Max with max thinking which is different from GPT 6.1 Small with max thinking.
If you look back the naming problem started around the point that OpenAI started doing reasoning models (o1, 4o) where they had to describe this fork in model behavior that let a smaller model think longer and be smarter.
You can come up with naming schemes that don't clash, but there's something to be said for this approach where the thinking level is like you describe and the model name requires you to learn that Astra is the largest model.
I guess it never really occurred to me that people wouldn't immediately grok:
* Luna (Moon)
* Terra (Earth)
* Sol (Sun)
* Astra (Galaxy/Universe)
The relative sizing seems dead simple.
> dead simple.
1. Even more dead simple if it just used Moon instead of Luna, Sun instead of Sol, etc. - one less quick translation in the head.
2. Or even more dead simple if it just used "Small", "Large", etc. - removing another quick translation in the head. (On the other hand, all these suggestions are English - maybe Luna, etc. is more understandable for non-English speakers?)
You're misunderstanding the misunderstanding.
You're right! The relative sizing of models is dead simple. This doesn't help when there are improvements between release numbers, and models are released one at a time instead of as a family.
When Sol 6.4 comes out and the latest Astra is still 6.1, which do you use?
I use Sol 6.4 because it's newer (and "big") unless there is a specific benchmark that 6.1 Astra scores better on that I think I need.
Or I might try both and pick whichever I prefer for a given task...
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