Flash 3.8 is out, as I discovered when it showed up in my Antigravity terminal.
A few notes after perhaps an hour of use:
- As I discussed earlier today, I use the latest Flash models heavily because they combine power and speed in such a valuable way.
- Flash 3.8 with high thinking did well on the first tough task I gave it, but it was slow (probably not faster than Fable). I'm likely to keep using Fable 5.1 instead of Flash for tougher tasks.
- Flash 3.8 with low thinking is addressing simpler tasks, both coding and non-coding, quickly and accurately. I believe that it's more powerful than 3.7, but I haven't yet felt that difference.
- So far, there's (still) a big latency difference between low and high thinking.
- I have a standard content-extraction task that I like to use as a benchmark. Over a small sample, Flash 3.8 with low thinking gave results ~25% faster than Flash 3.7 low thinking; those results are different but, in my judgment, not clearly better or worse.
- "Not better, but faster and a bit different" fits my experience across the ten or so little projects I've done with it so far. Again, given how I use Flash and how important speed is, it would be great if this were true.
Happy New Flash Day!
source & further reading
natemeyvis.com — original article
First impressions of Fable 5.1
Some recent applications of AI
Spaced repetition, APIs, and generative AI