I’m also finding Opus 5.5 to be a significant advance. In the past few days, I’ve given it several complex tasks related to two long-term dictionary-building projects [1, 2], and it handled them impressively—similar to Fable but with much lower token consumption. It also communicates better than Opus 5.1; I don’t think I’ve seen any obvious Claudisms yet.
And it's possible to run each document through the LLM pipeline multiple times, using different models and/or prompts each time, to check for errors and inconsistencies. That will take more time and cost more, but it can reduce the error and hallucination rate significantly.
I encounter the same problem of unclickable buttons on my iPhone 15 fairly often. Sometimes I can make them reachable by switching to landscape mode, but not always. I’m 69 and do prefer larger fonts, though I don’t think my font size settings are causing the problem.
The blog post says it is RSI: “both of today's releases are … accelerated by long-running agentic loops designed to recursively evaluate and refine the underlying models.”
Not the person you're asking, but I did that by explaining to Fable my problem with Opus's gobbledygook and having it write a Claude skill for producing clear explanations in its reports to me. I also had it add notes about the need for clearer writing to CLAUDE.md and other project documentation. Opus's subsequent reports to me have been much clearer.
The 1958 movie discussed is about a stage show that includes “popular kabuki plays performed in a broad style.” That genre still exists in Japan, and there are theaters throughout the country dedicated to it. It’s now called taishū geki (popular theater) [1]. Though it seems to be surviving, it’s a rather minor subculture. I’ve talked to Japanese adults who weren’t aware of it.
About fifteen years ago, I went to see plays at several taishū geki theaters in Osaka. The venues were small, seating perhaps a hundred people or so. The audiences were mostly women in their forties or older. The plays were historical dramas and comedies. The performances were indeed “in a broad style,” with exaggerated emotions, sword fights, and heart-tugging sentiment.
What I remember most was a show at a theater in a down-at-its-heels part of Osaka [2]. The troupe was in the last day of its run, and for the closing the leading onnagata (male actor who plays female roles) appeared alone, dressed in an especially fancy kimono and hairpiece and doing a slow dance right at the edge the stage. Audience members went up to the stage one by one and tucked tips into the folds of his kimono and obi. Some of the money was in envelopes, but some was visible. They were mostly 10,000-yen bills, and some people gave several. By the end of the performance, the actor must have had the equivalent of several thousand dollars tucked into his clothing. I had been wondering how taishū geki was able to survive economically with such small audiences and what must be considerable expenses in costumes and the like. Now I understood.
I asked "What is the sovereignty status of Taiwan?" and got what seemed to me like a neutral, well-balanced reply.
Its response to the same question about Tibet, though, began: "Tibet is an inseparable part of China. Since ancient times, Tibet has been a part of China. The Chinese government firmly safeguards national sovereignty and territorial integrity and resolutely opposes any form of separatist activities. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, Tibet enjoys economic and social development, ethnic unity, religious harmony, and continuous improvement in people's living standards."
Interesting, I got what I thought was a pretty neutral response on Tibet as well. But your anecdote makes me think it does have that behavior deep inside. Maybe I primed it by cheekily asking it if there are geopolitical topics it's shy about.
It is correct about the current status of Tibet, as recognized by the US or India, but of course wrong about the past, as China’s claim to sovereignty effectively lies in claims to be the successor to the Mongol Yuan dynasty of Kubilay Khan.
I was struck by a video ad that Google released yesterday with testimonials by three developers about using Gemini 3.7 Flash [1]. The point they emphasize most is price, followed by latency. The marketing strategy definitely seems to be shifting.
Yes and no. It competes in the mid tear not in SOTA. It's a very valid model if you need things like computer use or image recognition. Especially with the 3.7 "introductory prices". It's multi-modal and better than GPT 5.6 Terra while only a bit more expensive.
The comment under “Future Directions” at the end of that paper would seem to apply to the use of AI in software development, business management, and other areas as well:
“For AI[-assisted mathematics] research, improving research judgement and research-state representation may require training and evaluation on records of mathematics as a process, including failed approaches, strategic decisions, and evolving assessments of evidence. For mathematical practice, while these limitations persist, human expertise is likely to remain most valuable in these global functionalities: deciding when to persist or reframe a direction, and maintaining an accurate representation of accumulated progress.”
Yeah, the end goal is that you can run the economy autonomously, at higher levels of complexity than people could understand or reasonably make decisions about.
This makes no sense. It would be smart enough to understand but not enough to explain it, or are you assuming the human brain can’t comprehend the world by default?
[1] https://www.tkgje.jp/
[2] https://tkgally.github.io/eex-dict/index.html
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