You’d be forgiven for not knowing Claude. This chirpily-named AI assistant from Anthropic has been around for a while, like its celebrity cousin ChatGPT. But while ChatGPT hit the big time, Claude hasn’t quite progressed beyond the Other Platforms heading in most AI presentations – until now.
What changed everything this month was Anthropic’s release of all-new Claude 3 models – models that not only caught up with ChatGPT-4 benchmarks, but surpassed them. It’s wise to take benchmarks with a pinch of salt, not least because they’re often internal, proprietary measures. But the buzz around this latest release echoed through the newsletters, podcasts and socials, suggesting that this really was big news.
Tiers of a Claude
Claude 3 comes in three flavours. The most powerful, Opus, is the feistiest ChatGPT-beater by far. It’s also, understandably, the most processor-intensive, so available only as a premium option. That cost is on a level with competitors’ premium offerings, at just under £20 a month.
But just a notch beneath Opus, we have Sonnet. That’s Claude 3’s mid-range model, and the one you’ll chat with for free at https://claude.ai/chats. Anthropic reports that Sonnet still pips ChatGPT-4 on several reasoning benchmarks, with users praising how naturally conversational it seems.
Finally, we have a third tier, Haiku. This is the most streamlined of the three in terms of computing power. But it still manages to trounce ChatGPT-3.5 while coming impressively close to most of those ChatGPT-4 benchmarks. And the real clincher?
It’s cheap.
Haiku costs a fraction of the price per token of competing models to developers. That means it’s a lot cheaper to build it into language learning apps, opening up a route for many to incorporate AI into their software. That lower power usage too is a huge win against a backdrop of serious concerns around AI energy demands.
Claude and Content Creation
So how does it measure up in terms of language learning content? I set Claude’s Sonnet model loose on the sample prompt from my recent Gemini Advanced vs. ChatGPT-4 battle. And the verdict?
It more than holds its own.
Here’s the prompt (feel free to adapt and use this for your own worksheets – it creates some lovely materials!):
Create an original, self-contained French worksheet for students of the language who are around level A2 on the CEFR scale. The topic of the worksheet is “Reality TV in France“.
The worksheet format is as follows:
– An engaging introductory text (400 words) using clear and idiomatic language
– Glossary of 10 key words / phrases from the text (ignore obvious cognates with English) in table format
– Reading comprehension quiz on the text (5 questions)
– Gap-fill exercise recycling the same vocabulary and phrases in a different order (10 questions)
– ‘Talking about it’ section with useful phrases for expressing opinions on the topic
– A model dialogue (10-12 lines) between two people discussing the topic
– A set of thoughtful questions to spark further dialogue on the topic
– An answer key covering all the questions
Ensure the language is native-speaker quality and error-free.
Sonnet does an admirable job. If I’m nitpicking, the text is perhaps slightly less fun and engaging than Gemini Advanced. But then, that’s the sort of thing you could sort out by tweaking the prompt.
Otherwise, it’s factual and relevant, with some nice authentic cultural links. The questions make sense and the activities are useful. Claude also followed instructions closely, particularly with the inclusion of an answer key (so often missing in lesser models).
There’s little to quibble over here.
A Claude 3 French worksheet. Click here to download the PDF!
Another Tool For the Toolbox
The claims around Claude 3 are certainly exciting. And they have substance – even the free Sonnet model available at https://claude.ai/chats produces content on a par with the big hitters. Although our focus here is worksheet creation, its conversational slant makes it a great option for experimenting with live AI language games, too.
So if you haven’t had a chance yet, go and get acquainted with Claude. Its all-new model set, including a fabulous free option, makes it one more essential tool in the teacher’s AI toolbox.