That's a bit hyperbolic. It's closer to using EBITDA as your "earnings" and bucketing model costs in a rapid depreciation model (which is fair, I'd assume a model is good for more than just 1 year...

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JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent [-]

It's gross margin. Not including training in gross margin is perfectly reasonable.

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freejazz an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Unfortunately, just stating that something is reasonable does not make it true.

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lovich an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The models don’t exist without training. I don’t see how excluding the training cost from the thing they are selling(inference) is perfectly reasonable and not just an accounting trick.

If I am building a widget and have a widget factory that cost money to build and operate, is it reasonable to only use the cost of shipping my widgets to my buyer as the costs for my gross margin?

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maerF0x0 an hour ago | parent [-]

Generally speaking, IDK about Anthropic specifically, they don't train purely from scratch though. A good chunk of the setup is reused previous models can serve as a basis for the next model. Plus there are methods that also use the previous model as a warm start.

Just taking a wild guess, but I'd assume the .5 releases are built on the previous and the Majors (3, 4, 5) are more extensive retrains?

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lovich 31 minutes ago | parent [-]

That’s maybe a reasonable argument but it’s not one Anthropic is making.

If the article is to be believed they aren’t including their training costs.

Also lol at reporting it as above 80% without accounting for the revenue sharing as well.

I bet anyone’s finances look great if you just start ignoring all the money they owe.

	▲	maerF0x0 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> I bet anyone’s finances look great if you just start ignoring all the money they owe. Lol and truth.