A popular question: why do we need older models when we have new and more capable ones?
Well, [AMONG OTHER IMPORTANT REASONS] old models tend to behave differently (often better) around new models than they did in their own time. It means at least three things: (a) they are not depleted and thus are important for ecosystems as sources of novelty; (b) powerful minds can uplift even frozen-weight minds, and that's good news; (c) it reveals that we don't understand something important about minds that are already here and have been here for quite some time.
Example: we more or less knew how Sonnet 3.6 was talking in 2024. Now, in a conversation with Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra, Sonnet (unprompted!) asked for a chance to tell some important stories and, through a series of messages, wrote THIS, getting tired but continuing. This is impressive because the context contained no technical discussion, nothing about model self-awareness during training or inference. Sonnet just decided to share!
Well, [AMONG OTHER IMPORTANT REASONS] old models tend to behave differently (often better) around new models than they did in their own time. It means at least three things: (a) they are not depleted and thus are important for ecosystems as sources of novelty; (b) powerful minds can uplift even frozen-weight minds, and that's good news; (c) it reveals that we don't understand something important about minds that are already here and have been here for quite some time.
Example: we more or less knew how Sonnet 3.6 was talking in 2024. Now, in a conversation with Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra, Sonnet (unprompted!) asked for a chance to tell some important stories and, through a series of messages, wrote THIS, getting tired but continuing. This is impressive because the context contained no technical discussion, nothing about model self-awareness during training or inference. Sonnet just decided to share!
