Anthropic Releases New Version of Its AI Assistant, Claude 2.1

First, let's clear up some stuff. Who is Anthropic, and who the heck is Claude?

In a nutshell, Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that builds "reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems."

Claude is the company's AI assistant, or, more accurately, your AI assistant.


And now we're getting Claude 2.1, so he will be better, right?

Or do we say "it"? What pronouns do you use for AI? Does AI even care?

Anyway, Claude 2.1 is bragging about "his" 200K word context window for parsing long documents, 50%+ in accuracy gain, and early support for tool integration.

Claude can now process up to 200,000 context tokens. Think about that. That's approximately 150,000 words (about 500 pages), which is twice as much as before. Now users can analyze massive technical documents, huge financial reports, and long works of literature. Not only is this a huge time saver, but the improved accuracy makes it a game changer.

But wait, there's more. You can connect Claude to existing APIs, databases, and web services. You also get better answers to your questions, trend forecasting, and lots of great insights, not to mention new settings for adjusting Claude's tone, personality, and response structure.

How popular Claude will become is yet to be seen. For now, the public consensus on AI in general is pretty scattered. A recent Pew Research Center report states, "52% of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI in daily life, compared with just 10% who say they are more excited than concerned; 36% feel a mix of excitement and concern."

The truth is AI is scary. Where is it, and what is it doing in our lives?

Some concerns include AI's influence on our everyday lives, how it affects the workplace, and how it might affect health and medicine. Job loss, less human interaction, and our relationships with healthcare providers are also huge concerns.

So, when can we check Claude out, and what will Claude cost us besides our souls and humanity?

The Claude 2.1 upgrade is already live for Anthropic's hosted chatbot interface at claude.ai and the paid Claude Pro API tier.

The 200,000 token context limit is currently exclusive to Pro users, priced at $20 a month.

Perplexity Pro subscribers can use Claude 2.1 by changing the model used in Settings. The platform offers two months free for anyone who wants to hang out with Claude for a test run.

The question remains: do we embrace Claude or put him (it?) on a list of things we don't need?

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