Hacker News Reader

Comment by lifeisloving | Hacker News Reader

Its still prohibitively expensive, and models 5% the cost are faster and get the job done just as well (for the average person's workflow).

I really don't get the value proposition of these massive models, seems like they're just loss leaders simply to say you're the in the top 3. There's not much use cases outside of niche academic research (and even then I question the need). They mostly function as marketing tools, like a casino that offers high roller accommodations.

People will say "cyber" but companies didnt want to spend on security before, not sure why they would all of a sudden be compelled to spend even more.

View on HN

Not everyone is writing CRUD business apps and personal use software. Pretty much any model can do those now. The frontier is for doing things those models struggle with. Even in vibe coding a simple video game the difference in results between an open source model, the previous frontier model, and the current model is pretty huge.

Security is mandatory now in a way that it wasn't, now that AI has eliminated the skill barrier to hacking.

The llm induced Dunning Kruger is getting really old.

You dont need Fable to do most things. Your video game is still a "CRUD" app and you certainly wont make a great video game because you have access to fable. But marketing works well, people actually believe they can buy competency for themselves.

It hasnt eliminated the barrier to hacking. Please go find me a valid crit on any program on h1 with your fable 5.2 within the next 3 days, Ill bet my entire life savings it can't, and if you did it would cost 3x the bounty. You've been reading too much engagement farming articles/posts

Security has always been highly important, not any more than it is now. Companies are not going to suddenly start spending six figures on fable to protect themselves from imaginary AI powered hackers.

Its there for people who fall for cheap marketing who thnk they can shortcut meritocracy and make video games, or do security research with no skill. Good luck! Dont max out your CCs on llms.

I think the general notion that a lot of people are using models that are overpowered for their use case is right, but I think the big question is where the line actually is and how many people fit on either side. My suspicion based on my experience is that there are significantly more people on the "actually need the frontier model" side than the bear case suggests, but I'm not speaking with any authoritative data here and could be totally wrong.

I used to work on evals/observability at Opik: https://github.com/comet-ml/opik And I can say from working with lots of users running agents at scale, there is definitely a pretty commonly reached frontier of difficulty/complexity/abstraction where the capability difference between something like Fable/Astra and smaller models is a big deal. I find this to be especially true the more autonomous your workflow gets. You can still often tackle the hardest tasks with something like Opus, it just typically involves more direct intervention and design work from the user.

But again, this is just anecdata on my part. All of this is still pretty ambiguous and lots of companies are trying to solve the problem of matching models to task difficulty (I.e. routers), with varying degrees of success.

Fable 5.2 on low is both cheaper and more intelligent than Opus 5.5 on high. Prohibitively expensive is a gross oversimplification.

People looking at frontier models release are not the average person, and let's say that you pay $150 with Fable to save $1000*, it's much more interesting than using $10 with a cheap model to save even $500.

*Scale numbers to whatever suits you.

If you think llm usage provide that much value I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.. Their main value is as a tool for wage theft (which im cool with, jusy recognize it), so lazy people can cheat at their jobs and get by doing less. Basically every RFH engineer admits this to me. Work two hours, company pays for 8 plus a tool that does mediocre work, that everyone else has access too and thus provides no edge.

Fable class models are for people who fall for cheap marketing and are lazy and think they can now bypass a meritocracy and buy themselves competency. Really they'll just continue to be lazy, and the people with more competency will run circles around them with 1/10th the amount or llm usage, or none at all.

Well for tasks that can be done with another model you just use another model.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com