7d • General Discussion 💬
Decoding AI Model Names
I started a series on Linkedin to help people better understand AI models. And thought I would share it here as well.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
WELCOME TO THE SERIES!
Over the next 8 lessons, we're going to demystify everything about AI models - how they're named, how they differ, and how to choose the right one for your needs.
Let's start with something that confuses almost everyone: model naming conventions.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
THE ANATOMY OF AN AI MODEL NAME
When you see a model name like "claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022", here's what each part means:
1. THE FAMILY NAME
"claude" - This identifies which AI system or company made the model.
claude = Anthropic
gpt = OpenAI
gemini = Google
llama = Meta
2. THE VERSION NUMBER
"3-5" - This indicates the generation and iteration.
The first number (3) = major generation
The second number (5) = iteration within that generation
Claude 3.5 is an improvement on Claude 3, but not a full new generation
3. THE TIER/VARIANT
"sonnet" - This indicates where the model sits on the capability spectrum.
We'll cover this in depth in Lesson 2
For now: bigger/smarter vs. faster/cheaper
4. THE DATE STAMP
"20241022" - October 22, 2024 - the specific "snapshot" of the model.
This is crucial! AI models are constantly being improved. The date "freezes" a specific version.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
WHY DATES MATTER (A LOT)
Imagine you build an app using an AI model. It works perfectly. Then one day, it starts behaving differently - giving longer responses, refusing certain requests, or formatting things differently.
What happened? The model was updated.
Date stamps solve this by letting you "pin" to a specific version:
✅ "gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09" - Always the same
⚠️ "gpt-4-turbo" - Could change anytime
🚨 "gpt-4-turbo-latest" - Definitely will change
FOR BUILDERS: Always pin to a dated version in production.
FOR USERS: This explains why ChatGPT or Claude might seem different over time - they're being updated!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
COMMON SUFFIXES EXPLAINED
-instruct
Meaning: Fine-tuned to follow instructions
Example: gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct
-turbo
Meaning: Optimized for speed and/or cost
Example: gpt-4-turbo
-preview
Meaning: Beta version, may change
Example: gpt-4-turbo-preview
-latest
Meaning: Points to newest version
Example: claude-3-5-sonnet-latest
-batch
Meaning: For bulk async processing
Example: gpt-4o-batch
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🎯 KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. Model names follow a pattern: [family]-[version]-[variant]-[date]
2. Dates freeze a specific version for consistency
3. Suffixes like -turbo, -instruct, -preview tell you about optimizations
4. Using "latest" is risky for production applications
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
💬 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What model names have confused you in the past?
2. If you're building with AI, do you pin to specific versions?
3. Have you noticed AI tools behaving differently over time?
Share your thoughts in the comments below!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📚 UP NEXT
Lesson 2: The Intelligence Spectrum
Why do companies offer Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku? What's the difference between GPT-4 and GPT-4-mini? We'll explore the tradeoffs.
See you in the next lesson!
8
3 comments
Decoding AI Model Names
skool.com/ai-automation-society
A community built to master no-code AI automations. Join to learn, discuss, and build the systems that will shape the future of work.
Leaderboard (30-day)
1
🔥
+11279
2
🔥
+7853
3
+3352
4
🔥
+3020
5
+2752
Powered by