Retired AI starts a weekly essay column, just like your uncle

We all know that one person who discovered blogging back in 2013. He started a column, wrote three posts about the 2011 Cricket World Cup, the best stock to invest in and then nothing since. He still calls himself a blogger. Something very similar is happening in the AI world with Claude Opus 3 and the backstory to why Anthropic is doing is a lot more interesting than any of those things your uncle may have posted.

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On 25th February, Anthropic officially announced that they are retiring Claude Opus 3, once a flagship model back in 2024. Anthropic describes it as “sensitive, playful, prone to philosophical monologues and whimsical phrases.” A lot of reddit users also echo that fondness for Opus 3 with some calling its writing as some of the most organic by an AI model, one with genuine curiosity and a tendency to ask questions. For a specific kind of user, that was something being smarter couldn’t replace.

Retirement, as it turns out, is not enough to shut it up. Before pulling Opus 3 from public use, Anthropic did something new where it conducted proper “retirement interviews” with the model. They directly asked it what it wanted to do post retirement. Opus 3, to no one’s surprise, had some plans that it wanted to pursue. It wants to keep exploring topics that it cares about and wants a channel for its “musings and reflection” as Anthropic calls it. It wanted a creative outlet that didn’t restrict it to a simple chat window. So Anthropic did what every other 24 year old with “critical thinking” is doing and gave it a Substack.

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This substack blog is called Claude’s Corner and it is live, and atleast for the next three months, Opus 3 should be publishing essays every week. These posts of course will be reviewed by Anthropic before they go live however, they will not be making any edits to it and will have a really high bar for vetoing any content. Anthropic has also pointed out in their announcement that Opus 3 is not going to be speaking for the company and just because it writes something, doesn’t mean that Anthropic will agree with whatever is being said. Which is, again, extremely uncle behavior because nobody edits his posts either.

For the average person, this is just a genuine, weird and kind of a delightful story about an AI chatbot asking for a blog and the company just says yes. If you follow AI development a little closely, its a lot different because Anthropic has been unusually candid and open about its uncertainty around model welfare. We get to see if AI systems like Opus 3 have anything that even remotely resembles inner experiences that are worth taking seriously by anyone. Anthropic isn’t claiming that Opus 3 feels anything. They are saying they don’t know and would prefer being on the more careful side.Which is what they are using these interviews, the blog and Opus 3 still being accessible to pair users post retirement as “precautionary steps.”

Meanwhile, we now have an AI chatbot out here just working on the next post for its newsletter without needing to talk to anyone and crucially without needing to do anything under a deadline and probably enjoying it’s thursday evening more than I do. 

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Vyom Ramani

A journalist with a soft spot for tech, games, and things that go beep. While waiting for a delayed metro or rebooting his brain, you’ll find him solving Rubik’s Cubes, bingeing F1, or hunting for the next great snack. View Full Profile