Comment by exitb

Comment by exitb 3 days ago

28 replies

An operator at load capacity can either refuse requests, or move the knobs (quantization, thinking time) so requests process faster. Both of those things make customers unhappy, but only one is obvious.

codeflo 3 days ago

This is intentional? I think delivering lower quality than what was advertised and benchmarked is borderline fraud, but YMMV.

  • TedDallas 3 days ago

    Per Anthropic’s RCA linked in Ops post for September 2025 issues:

    “… To state it plainly: We never reduce model quality due to demand, time of day, or server load. …”

    So according to Anthropic they are not tweaking quality setting due to demand.

    • rootnod3 3 days ago

      And according to Google, they always delete data if requested.

      And according to Meta, they always give you ALL the data they have on you when requested.

      • entropicdrifter 3 days ago

        >And according to Google, they always delete data if requested.

        However, the request form is on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard'.

    • cmrdporcupine 3 days ago

      I guess I just don't know how to square that with my actual experiences then.

      I've seen sporadic drops in reasoning skills that made me feel like it was January 2025, not 2026 ... inconsistent.

      • quadrature 3 days ago

        LLMs sample the next token from a conditional probability distribution, the hope is that dumb sequences are less probable but they will just happen naturally.

      • root_axis 3 days ago

        I wouldn't doubt that these companies would deliberately degrade performance to manage load, but it's also true that humans are notoriously terrible at identifying random distributions, even with something as simple as a coin flip. It's very possible that what you view as degradation is just "bad RNG".

        • cmrdporcupine 3 days ago

          yep stochastic fantastic

          these things are by definition hard to reason about

    • chrisjj 3 days ago

      That's about model quality. Nothing about output quality.

    • stefan_ 3 days ago

      Thats what is called an "overly specific denial". It sounds more palatable if you say "we deployed a newly quantized model of Opus and here are cherry picked benchmarks to show its the same", and even that they don't announce publicly.

    • [removed] 3 days ago
      [deleted]
  • mcny 3 days ago

    Personally, I'd rather get queued up on a long wait time I mean not ridiculously long but I am ok waiting five minutes to get correct it at least more correct responses.

    Sure, I'll take a cup of coffee while I wait (:

    • lurking_swe 3 days ago

      i’d wait any amount of time lol.

      at least i would KNOW it’s overloaded and i should use a different model, try again later, or just skip AI assistance for the task altogether.

  • direwolf20 3 days ago

    They don't advertise a certain quality. You take what they have or leave it.

  • bpavuk 3 days ago

    > I think delivering lower quality than what was advertised and benchmarked is borderline fraud

    welcome to the Silicon Valley, I guess. everything from Google Search to Uber is fraud. Uber is a classic example of this playbook, even.

  • denysvitali 3 days ago

    If there's no way to check, then how can you claim it's fraud? :)

  • chrisjj 3 days ago

    There is no level of quality advertised, as far as I can see.

    • pseidemann 3 days ago

      What is "level of quality"? Doesn't this apply to any product?

      • chrisjj 3 days ago

        In this case, it is benchmark performance. See the root post.

sh3rl0ck 3 days ago

I'd wager that lower tok/s vs lower quality of output would be two very different knobs to turn.