Claude — the new AI kid on the block

Curiosity, mostly. That's what got me to try Claude.

I'd been on ChatGPT long enough that it had become background infrastructure — always open in a tab, always useful enough to not question. But I kept seeing Claude mentioned in circles I pay attention to, and Anthropic's approach to AI safety struck me as more considered than most. So last month I started routing some of my everyday prompts through Claude instead, just to see.

A few things stood out quickly. The writing it produces doesn't read like a language model wrote it. (Well, it is.) That sounds obvious, but spend enough time with ChatGPT and you start recognising the cadence; a certain rhythm, a tendency toward lists when prose would do better, hedges stacked on hedges. Claude's outputs have more texture to them. Personality may be too much of a stretch. 

The other thing, and this surprised me more, is that Claude seems to know what it doesn't know. ChatGPT will occasionally confabulate with remarkable self-assurance - detailed, plausible, and wrong. Claude is more likely to flag uncertainty, or to ask a clarifying question before charging ahead with an assumption. In a work context, that matters. Confidently wrong is often worse than uncertain. Of course, an LLM is an LLM is an LLM.

I should be fair: ChatGPT still has its edge cases where it pulls ahead. The plugin ecosystem is broader, and GPT-4's code interpreter has saved me hours on data wrangling tasks I don't particularly enjoy doing manually. These aren't minor points. And for the casual user, the difference probably won't be dramatic enough to bother switching.

But my default has shifted. When I open a new tab now, it's more often Claude than not. After months of the same habit, that's telling. 

(Title is a reference to an older post)

Breaking the Network Effect

 As most observers of Internet culture know, the power of a network is derived from the number of users on the platform. A single telephone user would have no utility from the device, but as more users join the network, the value to any single user goes up exponentially. This is also known as Metcalfe's law. 

All social media networks also follow the same principle - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and also WhatsApp. Most of these platforms have millions, if not billions, of users. As such, it's difficult for any new platform to challenge the incumbents. Even Google tried and failed multiple times to beat Facebook.

With all the recent news about updates to WhatsApp's terms of service, I had seen many friends moving to Signal recently. I personally installed Signal sometime back, but couldn't continue using it for the very same reason - network effect. If none of my friends are there, it isn't useful for me either. I uninstalled it soon after. 

However, a surge in migration provides opportunities to break the network effect that keeps the incumbent the leader. As a few people move to the new platform, they can choose to request all of their contacts to move as well. Many may not move the first time, but as they see more and more of their contacts moving and getting frequent requests to switch, the pressure builds until they also see enough value to move.

What can stop this from happening are switching costs - for example, WhatsApp has already opened up its API to allow businesses to interact with their customers.  As long as these businesses provide enough value for the WhatsApp users and don't replicate this on Signal as well, it will be difficult for the user to move and continue getting the same service. 

Personally, I have tried to convince some of my contacts to switch. Too early to say whether we will break the Network Effect.

Making WFH work

Redundancy. 

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world and the entire family had to rely on the home Internet connection for getting everything done, I was dreading the day when that connectivity would go out. That day came a couple of months back, when my wife and I had work calls lined up and both the boys were about to start their online classes. Thankfully, that exclamation point near the Wifi icon disappeared in five minutes, but scared me enough to make me sign up for a second, back-up connection.

Some basic research led me to the venerable EdgeRouter X, which could take in both ISP connections and provide a single load-balanced connection to the wireless AP. Setup was simple enough, the folks at Ubiquiti have done an amazing job with the wizard that can get you started in less than 5 minutes. Basic networking knowledge is helpful too, to get more done out of this workhorse of a machine. 

What pushed me to the EdgeRouter was its Gigabit connectivity, whereas the cheaper TP-Link ones cap out at 100 Mbps. With one 150 Mbps and another 100 Mbps connection, I didn't want the router to be the bottleneck. Speedtests at fast.com and speedtest.net both provide around 230-240 Mbps, meaning that load-balancing is working, and is actually aggregating for multi-part connections. Also setup Tasker and Connectbot on my Android to SSH into the router and toggle load-balancing and failover at the touch of a button. 

Unless something drastic takes out both the connections simultaneously, it's a reassuring feeling to know that there's some redundancy to the lifeline that's making things manageable in these crazy times.