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Comment by ff2400t | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's good scheme to follow but google is just following the trend of anthropic and OpenAI set up. I don't think anyone can understand Anthropic's Model naming scale with Haiku, opus, fable and Mythos. Similar with the OpenAI tera and other models in their line up.

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I think the others are mostly pretty clear. A haiku is a very short poem; a sonnet is a longer poem; an opus is an artistic masterwork ("Magnum opus"), so not necessarily longer but certainly grander. Mythos is slightly more tenuous but still goes in the direction of "cultural awe", something that the highest forms of writing aim for. Fable isn't a perfect name TBH, it sounds much less grand than "mythos" to my ears despite being roughly the same product AFAICT, and with a dangerous hint of "I might make things up".

I think OpenAI's names are clearest. In most people's understanding, moon < Earth < sun < stars.

More importantly, Anthropic has been consistent with their naming convention for years (two, yes, but plural years) now. OpenAI and Google’s habit of changing naming conventions semi-regularly makes their products harder to grok.

Android version names were random desserts for the longest time. People are expecting too much from Google here

They weren't random. They were alphabetical. The first letter of the name always shifted to the next letter in the alphabet.

• Cupcake (Android 1.5)

• Donut (Android 1.6)

• Eclair (Android 2.0–2.1)

• Froyo (Android 2.2)

• Gingerbread (Android 2.3)

• Honeycomb (Android 3.0–3.2)

• Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0)

• Jelly Bean (Android 4.1–4.3)

• KitKat (Android 4.4)

• Lollipop (Android 5.0–5.1)

• Marshmallow (Android 6.0)

• Nougat (Android 7.0–7.1)

• Oreo (Android 8.0–8.1)

• Pie (Android 9)

This isn't the same situation. Android versions always had 2 parts: the number and the name. They were always easy to follow.

Using constantly changing names for tiers is a bad idea. Unless the tiers are pre-existing (bronze, silver, gold).

They were alphabetically ordered random desserts. It wasn't too bad.

Using the word "grok" here offers some great "Whose on first?" opportunities.

> Fable isn't a perfect name TBH

Fables are short.

They should have used "saga" / "epic" / "cycle" / "series" / "universe".

I realize that you're making a point about ordering here but realistically none of these except maybe Saga work as Anthropic product names.

Epic and Universe for sure work as LLM model names.

Agree to disagree I guess

I think of it as earth being where I am, not in relation to the size of the items, so to me it’s weird that Luna is far away, then Terra is close, then Sol is further. So even those names aren’t clear to everyone. Actually I didn’t realize the ordering was size-based until you said it. And Astra isn’t really a size, is it?

This is so dorky, but I have a comparison with frisbees. In Disc golf each brand does its own naming scheme related to the speed / stability of discs. One company (Prodigy) produced a _roughly_ ordered approach and people very regularly commented on how confusing it was. By comparison, other brands (which got no critiques) have literally arbitrary names matching only a theme (e.g. electricity, animals, ...mental disorders/phenomena). It took me a very long time to come to grips with it. I ultimately think with branding... it only matters that people who use the system can identify things as distinct. I think the subset of minds that wants a strictly logical relationship to ordering is fleetingly small. To most people its additionally not even relevant.

My only real complaint with Google is they regularly change names for seemingly no reason. I'm still out here saying "Gemini" when I type "agy" and I don't bother saying "Anti gravity" because I assume that name won't exist in a year or two.

Gemini was also known as Bard.

> but google is just following the trend of anthropic and OpenAI set up.

They botched it.

A haiku is a short poem. A sonnet is a longer work. An opus is a great work. Mythos is a connected body of works.

As with Open AI, Luna --> Terra --> Sol --> Astra from smallest to largest. Very straightforward.

With Google it's totally incoherent. Hydrogen --> Argon --> Carbon!?

Hydrogen is small, but it's the most abundant element in the universe by far. Argon is >3x larger than carbon by molecular mass, though carbon is more abundant. It's impossible to determine what's supposed to be smaller and what's supposed to be larger.

Yea, impossible to know whether it's supposed to go by atomic mass, frequency or some other metric. Plus most people off the top of their heads don't really have these stats memorized. With OpenAI and Anthropic it's way more straightforward. If you stop the average person on the street and told them to order the three by mass, most couldn't do it. But they could order Moon/Earth/Sun/Astra

Yeah. Atomic mass: Makes no sense, argon is larger than carbon. Frequency: Makes no sense, argon is least frequent of the three and hydrogen is everywhere, so carbon would be in-between rather than the flagship.

Letters of the alphabet: Also makes no sense. There was a theory that Argon = A, that there was an unreleased B model (Bismuth or Barium or something), Carbon = C, etc. (Similar to Intel's MMORPG-inspired Alchemist --> Battlemage --> Celestial...) Hydrogen broke this notion.

It's just completely incoherent.

Now written out like this, I can see a D = Deuterium, which is mass 2 or heavy hydrogen, but somewhere along along the line it was lost in translation.

Molecular mass tracks.

I’m not sure if the average person on the street would know the terms Luna, Terra, Sol, and especially Astra.

Also, the biggest being Astra is a bit confusing. Sol is also a star.

Furthermore, unless you know they’re supposed to be ordered by size you can’t know which is best.

> I’m not sure if the average person on the street would know the terms Luna, Terra, Sol, and especially Astra.

I don't think these are as difficult as you're making them sound? I think the majority of people who will care what model they're using will know "lunar", "terrestrial", "solar", "astronomy" etc?

Corsa, Astra, Vectra and Omega would be better names.

I see that Kadett finally disintegrated into nothingness :)

Into a heap of rust and a puddle of oil.

The average person isn't supposed to care, they won't be switching models to prompt for the best television for under $1000. But for professionals they should have some sort of understanding of these things.

Molecular mass is monotonic and tracks. Think of how you encounter the elements on earth -- hydrogen is a light gas, argon is slightly denser gas, and carbon is in complex life forms or graphite/diamonds. I agree nobody will remember the atomic masses, but if you ask them "which is heavier at room temp at sea level" I bet most technical people will get it right.

I never made these connections until now. This will really help me remember which is which, I honestly had just given up.

It's funny how different naming schemes "click" (or don't) with different people in different ways. When I first heard the haiku/sonnet/opus it was immediately obvious that they were linking the size of the model to the size of the piece of writing. Same with moon/planet/sun etc. for OpenAI's models.

If Google was going to go with elements, it should have been an absolute no-brainer to link size of of the element to the size of the model eg. Hydrogen/carbon/argon, but no, Google screws up the naming like they _always_ do. Hell, use the noble gases for christ sake. Helium/neon/argon/krypton/xeon would have been great, not perfect mind you, because a lot of people might not remember the ordering of those elements, but at least it would be consistent and make sense.

when you put it this way, it sounds like they are operating on an XY axis (at least) vs a continuum. Argon big, complicated, slow AND expensive; Carbon abundant, widely available, can do anything, costly as a result; Hydrogen, abundant, volatile, cheap. can't imagine how insane Nitrogen must be

Sometimes I wonder if naming things is hard or what.

Google genuinely have made a huge mess with their AI product stack. They have Antigravity, Antigravity IDE, Gemini app, AI Studio, etc. They have too many similarly named and confusing products. Google should seriously fire their branding team and bring some new talent to consolidate and restructure things logically.

Maybe the AI is trying to tell us its real name !

Ar - C - H - ?

If the next two are oxygen and nitrogen, which are plausible, that would be somewhat sinister.

So the next model will be Yttrium?:)

Of course Google is ordering their models by their density at standard temperature and pressure.

Hydrogen: this thing floats. Density less than air.

Argon: does not float. Density more than air.

Carbon: this thing is a solid, whichever allotrope you pick. It’s solidly heavier.

See, so easy! /s

I don't know if it's a good idea to market one's AIs by how "dense" they are.

Of course not. See the /s tag.

Wait until you start digging into open weights models. There you have actual "dense" models as well as "Mixture of Experts" models.

What's a fable? Why is it bigger than an Opus?

Google's ordering totally clicks in my mind. At room temp / 1bar, hydrogen is a light gas, argon is also a gas but denser (and less ubiquitous, more interesting industrial uses, noble gas), and carbon is a solid that forms covalent bonds with all kinds of stuff and gives us life and technology.

> With Google it's totally incoherent. Hydrogen --> Argon --> Carbon!?

Yeah, to someone with a chemistry background, the naming is just terrible. There’s no apparent periodic table trend and no functional relationship.

Argon is most perplexing. As the third in the Noble gas series, it is essentially inert. Its main laboratory/industrial use is to provide a locally inert atmosphere to keep things from reacting. It’s used when pure nitrogen is too reactive.

An element whose main traits are “inert, prevents things from happening” seems like terrible marketing for an LLM.

I find theirs to be a lot more excusable, given it's obvious that the Sun is bigger than the Earth, which is bigger than the Moon. Anthropic less-so, but if you know the meaning of each, you can infer it somewhat well.

Google's is just random.

Anthropic's naming does not make sense, but at least they are consistent.

What about it makes no sense? I find it to make the most sense, given it's about text generation and their models are named from shortest text to longest.

They aren't, though- a fable is only bigger than a sonnet. Technically, an opus is any creative work, including a music score. A magnum opus would be a person's most celebrated work, but that doesn't have to mean biggest or longest.

Well, they make sense, you are right, but it's not straightforward to match sizes to the length of each text.

I guess it's poetic but I don't see how haiku < sonnet < opus < fable < mythos is unclear. If you've never been exposed to literature maybe?

You day that very matter of factly as if it doesn't include "opus < fable"

I think people on HN argue way too much about this. It's not like they're named iPhone 18 Pro XL Max. It's meant to evoke a feeling of wonder or awe, not really that hard of a logical leap to make, and it's only one minor quibble. Jeesh.

An opus (single piece of work) is smaller than a fable! That's intuitive.

Mythos (Greek) = Fable (Latin)

Fable is essentially Mythos but with guard rails added.

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