Let’s talk about the absolute mess that is AI model naming. Google and OpenAI, I’m looking at you. These tech giants, with all their billions and brainpower, can’t seem to figure out how to name their AI models in a way that makes sense.
First up, OpenAI. They’ve got this GPT-4o family. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. The lowercase ‘o’ often gets mistaken for a zero, so people think it’s GPT-4.0. And don’t even get me started on what the ‘o’ stands for. It used to mean ‘omni’ for multimodal capabilities, but now with the o1 models, it doesn’t mean that anymore. It’s a naming disaster.
Then there’s Google with their Gemini family. They’ve managed to outdo themselves in the confusion department. We’ve got Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 Flash. But wait, there’s more! They’ve added ‘002’ to the end of these names. Why? Who knows! It’s like they’re actively trying to make it as complicated as possible. Google, a multi-trillion dollar company, apparently can’t afford to hire anyone who knows how to name things properly.
Contrast this with Anthropic’s Claude models. Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3 Sonnet, Claude 3 Haiku. See how easy that is to understand? Even their recent addition, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, fits neatly into the naming scheme. It’s almost like they want people to actually know what they’re talking about.
And let’s not forget Meta with their Llama models. They’ve kept it straightforward with version numbers and model sizes. Llama 3 70B? You know exactly what you’re getting.
The real issue here is about communication. When tech companies can’t even name their products clearly, how can they expect users to understand and trust them? It’s just plain annoying. Clear, consistent naming isn’t just good practice; it’s essential for building trust and understanding in the AI field.
Until then, we’re all stuck deciphering their naming gibberish like some kind of tech hieroglyphics. For more insights on AI developments and their impact, check out my post on the growth of AI context windows. It’s a clear look at how AI capabilities are expanding – without the confusing naming schemes.
Let’s hope these tech giants take a page from Anthropic and Meta’s book soon. Until then, good luck figuring out what ‘gemini-1.5-pro-002’ actually means.
