Anthropic, a high-profile player in the A.I. industry, released a new version of its Claude chatbot on Monday called Claude 3 Opus. The firm’s heading to the forefront of developments in artificial intelligence and is talking a big game against companies like OpenAI and Google.
Dario Amodei, the company’s chief executive and co-founder, claims the new technology outperforms other leading chatbots on a range of standard benchmark tests, including systems from Google and OpenAI. According to Amodei, Claude 3 Opus was particularly useful when analyzing scientific data or generating computer code.
The startup asserts that its updated chatbot is more efficient than both GPT-4, the latest version of ChatGPT, and Gemini, Google’s chatbot. Claude 3 Opus surpasses them in mathematical problem-solving, computer coding, general knowledge, and various other areas.
Claude 3 Opus was made available to consumers who pay $20 a month for a subscription to Anthropic. Though there is a less powerful version, called Claude 3 Sonnet, that is accessible to the public for free.
Anthropic is among a small group of companies at the forefront of generative A.I., technology that can create text, images, and sounds instantly. Dr. Amodei and other Anthropic founders assisted in pioneering the technology while working as researchers at OpenAI, which launched the generative A.I. boom in late 2022 with the release of the commodified chatbot, ChatGPT.
Chatbots such as ChatGPT are known for answering questions, writing term papers, generating small computer programs, and more. However, they are also known for producing false or misleading information that can easily go unnoticed.
Lately, the leading artificial intelligence companies have been distracted by continuous controversies and legal disputes over ethics with media organizations, the government, etc. Most prominently, the manner in which they gather digital data to develop their A.I. programs has been deemed unethical, with The New York Times suing Microsoft and OpenAI for allegedly stealing their information, writing, and data.
The computer chips needed to build A.I. are also reportedly in limited supply.
Yet, the technology as a collective continues to move at a formidable pace, as startups like Anthropic try to solidify their place in the industry with updated programs and chatbots.
The main thing Claude 3 Opus is incapable of is generating images, unlike Google’s Gemini, which recently had its ability to create pictures suspended after it produced images showing Brown and Black people in military uniforms from World War II.
Anthropic also allows businesses to build their own chatbots and other services using the Opus and Sonnet technologies.
