And as another commenter pointed out - in particular for Google of all companies - expect that the rug pull can and will happen. They're not known for keep anything around for very long.
It's not because a model performs better in some applications (often by fine-tuning to get better scores at specific tests) that it is better across the board or that we have to believe the company releasing the model with a high number 3 > 2 so that it is commonly accepted as better.
Pushing the reasonnning further: f you need an Opus level performance then not accepting GPT 3 isn't a smell.
I tried 3 flash for months and it didn’t work using Googles own vertexai integration because it’s been in preview mode for months.
Not wanting to pay significantly more and do a bunch of rework isn’t a smell.
They left a large gap in their new pricing vs the prior generation, and if you had a working use case that sucks. The model is >99% reliable for my use case so there’s nothing to gain from a smarter model.
But this could be framed as 'getting attached to an API revision when a new one is available'...
I can see it both ways, tbh.
If a company deploys a paid AI model and makes people depend on it, they need to dump the weights at EOL.
Why does Google constantly kill off good things?
but it's more likely just a business case: they need you buying higher tier model output. They know whose doing what, so someone needs their 3Q bonus.
But then I realized Opus 3 is an outlier, and Anthropic has removed access to relatively more recent models. https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/model-depre...
I wonder what the deal is with Opus 3.
At least in benchmarks, it scores higher and is faster.
At least now MiMo v2.5 exists and can be used as another dirt cheap multimodal model.