The Rise of Claude 3.5 SONNET: A New AI Contender

The Rise of Claude 3.5 SONNET: A New AI Contender

I’ve been using AI intensely for building beautiful websites and solving development questions (and optimising this post). It’s actually been training me to understand a lot of technical topics better and solve problems without needing external specialists. This has really helped boost my learning curve and made me better at building highly functional WordPress websites that really match need of my clients, and beyond.

My Experience with GPT-4

Because of this intense use, I quickly adopted and subscribed to ChatGPT Plus. I was happy to get the fastest and smartest GPT model out there. It’s been a great assistant in structuring thoughts, drafting content, checking spelling, and sometimes just cleaning up content to improve readability. I’ve even been using it to impress my friends by generating funny images based on prompts.

However, for my last client’s website, which was mostly content-heavy, I struggled a lot with GPT-4’s ability to stay consistent. I saw a lot of mistakes popping up in the responses. These mistakes I then had to manually change, which was pretty time-consuming. I understand we’re not there yet with AI taking everything off your plate, but you do expect some consistency from a computer model, right?

Weirdly, I feel that since GPT-4 has been made public to all users, not just Plus users, the quality of the responses has actually gone down. Lately, I’m seeing more and more errors popping up, and the speed has also become an issue.

Discovering Claude 3.5 SONNET

This led me to look around for alternatives. I read a lot about the rise of Claude, specifically the AI model Claude 3.5 SONNET. It has a free version you can use, and I was astonished by the quality of writing, the readability, and how fast it responds. It also clearly understands your question and gives you that specific piece of information instead of repeating whole sections again and again, which can be really frustrating when using ChatGPT frequently.

Why Claude 3.5 SONNET is Better

I’ve been using Claude more and more in the last few weeks, and I can highly recommend everyone to take a look at the capabilities of this really great AI model to make your life easier. The speed of response and the quality of the Claude model is really impressive.

Real-World Applications

You can start using Claude just to improve your emails. Write an email, even if it’s sloppy, and just use the prompt “clean up this email” or “improve the readability of this email.” You’ll see that an AI model can already help you restructure and put things in the right order to make it easier for the receiver to understand you better.

It’s also great for meeting prep. You can read out your notes from a last meeting to Claude and ask it to restructure them, put them in a bullet point list, and then ask for suggestions on how to approach the next meeting or ideas for improvement.

Considerations When Switching to Claude

While Claude 3.5 SONNET offers impressive capabilities, there are a few features of ChatGPT that I still find valuable:

1. Speech-to-Text Functionality: ChatGPT’s audio-to-speech feature is really, really, really great, and I would highly recommend anyone to experiment with it. They offer this functionality in the mobile phone app and also in the desktop iOS app. I’m not talking about the conversation mode, but the speech-to-text mode. This is a feature I’d miss if I switched entirely to Claude.
2. Internet Access: ChatGPT has access to the internet, which is really convenient if you want to do online research and get new insights that are current as of today. This can be a significant advantage for certain tasks.
3. Image Generation: While more of a vanity feature, ChatGPT’s ability to generate images is really cool, especially on birthdays to show your friends how it can create any image you ask for. However, I’ve noticed that it’s not something I use very often in my day-to-day work.

These features mean that even while I’m increasingly using Claude, I still find myself using ChatGPT for certain tasks. It’s worth considering how these capabilities fit into your workflow when deciding which AI assistant to use.

Expert Opinions

According to InfoQ, Claude 3.5 SONNET is gaining recognition for its near-human abilities in understanding and generating text. Ars Technica highlights its advanced language processing capabilities, positioning it as a strong competitor to other leading AI models.

Further Reading

For those interested in diving deeper into the capabilities of Claude and how it compares to other AI models, I recommend checking out these insightful articles:

1. An Ars Technica article discussing how Claude 3 is heating up the AI competition with its near-human abilities. (Read more) 
2. A Tom’s Guide piece highlighting Claude Artifacts as a major AI innovation, including prompts to try. (Read more) 

These articles provide valuable perspectives on the evolving AI landscape and can help you make an informed decision about which AI tools might best suit your needs.

Conclusion

I really believe that an AI should never be leading you, but it’s a great assistant and a great little helper to help you structure and clean up your work. But always, always read your inputs and make sure that you check it yourself as a human. AI hasn’t come to the point where you can 100% rely on it, especially when you use it from a personal perspective.

I hope this gives you a good idea of why Claude 3.5 SONNET is worth checking out, along with some considerations about its current limitations compared to ChatGPT. Give it a try and see how it can help you in your work!