Claude 3

What is Claude 3?

Like most AI chatbots, Claude is designed to simulate a text conversation with a real person. It can answer questions, write stories, create outlines, and analyze images and documents. It is becoming a popular choice for generative AI among programmers, students, and business professionals as it pushes beyond the limitations of other AI tools.

Claude is a service provided by a start-up company called Anthropic. In early 2023, Anthropic released the very first version of Claude and, since then, has released various models such as Claude 2, 2.1, 3, and 3.5 Sonnet.

Differences Between Claude 2.1, 3, and 3.5

The Claude 3 family introduces four key improvements: increased knowledge base, enhanced image and document analysis capabilities, expanded multilingual support, and reduced tendency to produce inaccurate information (often referred to as "hallucinations").

Claude 3 models can provide detailed analysis of images and documents uploaded by users. They also excel at communicating and performing tasks in multiple languages. Additionally, these models feature an increased context window, allowing for more in-depth conversations and improved consistency throughout longer interactions.

Anthropic recently released Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which offers improved performance (speed) over the original Claude 3 models. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is available to users with free accounts. While this update brings incremental improvements, it's not a drastic change from the original Claude 3 release.

Evaluating Different Models

The three current models of Claude are Haiku, Sonnet 3.5, and Opus.

Claude 3 - Model Family: Shows Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus as each gets more costly and more intelligent.

Sonnet 3.5 is the default model for the free version of Claude 3. It is trained on a little more data than Haiku and creates longer responses with more knowledge on each topic. It is a little more expensive to run, but still one of the cheaper options for the founding company, Anthropic.

Haiku runs off of more limited data than the other models. It is designed to generate 1-2 sentence responses as concisely as possible. It runs faster and provides the least expensive service on the back end.

Opus is the largest model of Claude 3. It can handle more complex prompts and create the most creative content. This is available through the Pro account.

Anthropic currently provides two different types of paid plans: Pro and Team. Pro is an individual plan that costs $20 per month and allows access to Opus and Haiku. Team is a group plan, costing $30 per person per month. With a minimum of 5 users, each user gains access to all Pro features with additional collaboration features.

Free Account: Limitations

While it can provide general information about some websites, Claude cannot browse the internet directly, so you cannot reference a direct link or request up-to-date information.
The free version of Claude has a limit on how many chat messages can be sent daily. Claude provides a warning message when you are running low along with the time the message count will be reset.
Claude also cannot create or display images. It can only read the images you upload.

Using Claude 3

To use Claude 3, visit this link. Create an account and it will direct you to a page similar to this one.

The Claude 3 opening page says "Good morning" and introduces the chat. This allows the user to start a new AI chat simply.

If you have used Claude in the past, your chat history will appear below the textbox. If you don't see it, scroll down to the bottom.

Type any command into the prompt to get the chat started.

Here is an example of a prompt that could be useful:

Claude can help students learn by carrying a conversation or creating an interactive quiz about a given subject.

Using the attachment feature to upload documents, graphs, data visualizations, etc., along with your prompt can make the output even more helpful. You can also upload a visualization and ask specific questions such as, "What conclusions can I make about unemployment based on this graph?"

A grid of data visualizations is uploaded to Claude 3. The user then asks for an analysis and gets a response that provides an in-depth exploration of the data.

BYU and Claude

Claude is a Generative AI service provided by Anthropic which markets itself to prioritize ethics, honesty, and security. However, BYU does not have an enterprise agreement for Claude 3. This means that Nonpublic Institutional Data should never be input into Anthropic Claude.

Regulations and guidelines for using AI as a student can be found on this site. Please remember that this is meant to be a tool, not a way to cheat. If you are a student with questions regarding AI, ask your professors their preferences for the course. If you are a professor, clarify with your students where and how AI should be used.