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- 🧙🏼 Hi Claude 3.7 Sonnet
Howdy, wizards.
Here’s what’s brewing in AI.
DARIO’S PICKS
Source: Anthropic // DALL-E
After months without new model releases, Anthropic is back with the launch of Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
The new model is optimised towards real-world business applications (which they do know a lot about). It outperforms all competitors on key coding and agentic tool use benchmarks and introduces a hybrid reasoning approach — switching between fast responses and deep thinking when needed.
The standard mode builds on Claude 3.5's already strong performance in writing and coding. But the real game-changer is the new reasoning mode: extended thinking.
This mode directs the model, the same model, to think more deeply about your question. It also writes out its thinking process for you, so you can follow along or just check back in a minute when it’s finished.
While 3.7 Sonnet is available across all Claude plans, the extended thinking mode requires a paid plan. For devs using the Claude API, they’ll have fine-grained control over how long the model thinks, allowing quality/speed optimization.
Cool showcase of the new coding capabilities: some guy on X built a snake game for Apple Watch that's controlled by your heart rate with just 5 prompts.
Why it matters In case you got momentarily swayed by the o1s and DeepSeeks and Groks, there’s now a compelling reason to get back to using Claude.
Something to note about the reasoning capability is that Anthropic acknowledges that Claude’s internal thoughts can be misleading or half-baked. Researchers have found these models often make decisions based on factors they don't explicitly mention – challenging the idea that watching AI "think" is a reliable safety measure.
Also, Anthropic is riding the whole wave of less censorship, and has reduced the refusal-rat (when Claude says “nope, can’t help with that”) by 45% for the new model compared to the predecessor. Finally, you can find out happens if you mix bleach and ammonia.
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DARIO’S PICKS
Details are vague, but Perplexity’s CEO just teased that they’re launching Comet — a new agentic web browser, “very soon”. No other details or dates were given about its launch, but you can sign up for the waitlist.
Perplexity launched a new Deep Research mode that’s available to try for free.
You ask it a question and it breaks up the task into separate components and searches hundreds of sources for you for each step. After 2-4 minutes it gives you a detailed report.
You get 5 free queries per day or unlimited if you have Perplexity Pro ($20/mo). Some are referring to it like a mini-version of ChatGPT Pro, but 10x cheaper.
Why it matters Perplexity is great with UI/UX, something the major AI labs lack in my opinion. Combine that with their fast web search and you’ll see why they might be well suited to launch something like a web browser.
Regarding Deep Research, I’ve been it for a week now and it goes way more in-depth than anything I’ve tried so far. The way it pivots and refines its search plan as it works through online sources is pretty crazy. A bit like having a savvy junior researcher to help you out whenever you need. Be warned though, it’s far from perfect and, like most LLMs — often lies in order to please you (in a very eloquent way, which makes it difficult to spot) and makes confident conclusions on thin foundations.
PS if you want a free year of Perplexity Pro, I’d recommend applying to the Perplexity Business Fellowship (applications closing on Feb 28th). No guarantees but from what I’ve seen, they’re pretty generous with approvals.
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Side notes
Here are the other essential updates on AI you shouldn’t miss this week, that I didn’t have time to cover in-depth.
Elon Musk’s xAI launched Grok-3 last week, and is now up there in terms of performance with the leading AI labs. Ethan Mollick said it came in “right at expectations” not necessarily better than o1 or 03-mini-high. It has two reasoning variations: Think and Deepsearch. It’s supposed to be uncensored but won’t mention negative details on Musk or Trump. You need X Premium to try it out.
Along with Sonnet 3.7, Anthropic also launched Claude Code in research preview — an agentic coding tool that lets you work with Claude directly in your terminal.
Mira Murati, OpenAI’s ex-CTO which left the company a few months ago launched Thinking Machines — a new AI lab focused on human-AI collaboration.
Google launched an AI co-scientist, a multi-agent system built on Gemini 2.0 that is designed to accelerate scientific discoveries by generating novel hypotheses and research proposals.
Norwegian company 1X just showcased a new humanoid robot. It’s supposed to be “soft and approachable”, but still gives me the creeps, tbh. Why we just make 3-CPO?
Mistral launched Saba, a region-specific AI made for Middle Eastern and South Asian regions.
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THAT’S ALL FOLKS!
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