There’s more than a bit of irony in the author complaining about A/B testing and then, because they’re getting a lot of traffic and attention on HN, removing key content that was originally in their piece so some of us have seen it but many of us won’t.
Whilst I broadly agree with their point, colour me unimpressed by this behaviour.
EDIT: God bless archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20260314105751/https://backnotpr.... This provides a lot more useful insight that, to me, significantly strengthens the point the article is making. Doesn’t mean I’m going to start picking apart binaries (though it wouldn’t be the first time), but how else are you supposed to really understand - and prove - what’s going on unless you do what the author did? Point is, it’s a much better, more useful, and more interesting article in its uncensored form.
EDIT 2: For me it’s not the fact that Anthropic are doing these tests that’s the problem: it’s that they’re not telling us, and they’re not giving us a way to select a different behaviour (which, if they did, would also give them useful insights into users needs).
Whilst I broadly agree with their point, colour me unimpressed by this behaviour.
EDIT: God bless archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20260314105751/https://backnotpr.... This provides a lot more useful insight that, to me, significantly strengthens the point the article is making. Doesn’t mean I’m going to start picking apart binaries (though it wouldn’t be the first time), but how else are you supposed to really understand - and prove - what’s going on unless you do what the author did? Point is, it’s a much better, more useful, and more interesting article in its uncensored form.
EDIT 2: For me it’s not the fact that Anthropic are doing these tests that’s the problem: it’s that they’re not telling us, and they’re not giving us a way to select a different behaviour (which, if they did, would also give them useful insights into users needs).