NLP Lineage

20 June 2024 · Multimodality

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Anthropic

Date
20 June 2024
What the date marks
Announcement
Kind
Model
Organisation
Anthropic
Access
API only
Other dates
upgraded 2024-10-22
Threads
In the guided tour
Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
Learning phases
3. API usage and prompting

A milestone: 2 later milestones descend directly from it, and its descendants reach 5 of the 10 threads. How levels are decided

Read the primary source (anthropic.com)

Full summary in progress. Until then, this page shows the milestone's record from the research data.

What it changed

Before it

Capability tracked size, so the flagship was always the largest model.

The problem

The largest model is also the slowest and most expensive to serve.

What it introduced

A mid-tier model outperforming the previous flagship at a fraction of the cost and latency.

Why it matters

It broke the assumption that frontier capability requires frontier size, and made strong models cheap enough for agents to call repeatedly.

What modern models inherit

Cheap frontier-class models as the substrate for agent loops.

What came next

The 3.5 line gained computer use in October, then 3.7 added extended thinking.

Before and after

The milestones it descends from, and the milestones that descend from it. Work developed alongside it is not counted. Weak links are left out unless you include them.

Before: where it came from

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 42 documented ancestors across 9 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 17 turning points among them.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 42 documented ancestors across 9 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 44 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 9 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 17 turning points among them.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 44 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 9 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

  1. 2024Claude 3.5 SonnetThis milestone.
  2. 2024Claude 3Claude 3.5 Sonnet built directly on thisChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  3. 2023GPT-4 Turning pointClaude 3 was influenced by thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  4. 2023ClaudeClaude 3 built directly on thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  5. 2022Constitutional AIClaude 3 built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  6. 2022GPT-3.5 Turning pointGPT-4 succeeded thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  7. 2022HH-RLHFConstitutional AI built directly on this
    Claude was influenced by this    Chapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  8. 2022InstructGPT Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  9. 2022Chain of thought Turning pointConstitutional AI was influenced by thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  10. 2021HHH assistantHH-RLHF built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  11. 2021FLANInstructGPT was influenced by thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  12. 2020RLHF for summarisation Turning pointInstructGPT built directly on this
    HH-RLHF built directly on this    Chapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  13. 2020GPT-3 Turning pointChain of thought was influenced by this
    InstructGPT built directly on this
    GPT-3.5 built directly on this    Chapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  14. 2020Scaling laws Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  15. 2019T5 Turning pointFLAN was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  16. 2019C4 Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  17. 2019RLHF for LMsRLHF for summarisation built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  18. 2019Sparse Transformer Turning pointGPT-3 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  19. 2019GPT-2 Turning pointScaling laws was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  20. 2019WebTextGPT-2 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  21. 2018BERT Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  22. 2018SentencePieceT5 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  23. 2018GPT-1GPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  24. 2018ELMoBERT was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  25. 2018ULMFiTBERT was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  26. 2017CoVeELMo was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  27. 2017RLHF originConstitutional AI was influenced by thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  28. 2017Transformer Turning pointScaling laws built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  29. 2016Layer normTransformer built directly on this
    GPT-2 built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  30. 2015Residual connectionsTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  31. 2015LM pretraining Turning pointGPT-1 was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  32. 2015BPE tokenizationGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  33. 2015Luong attentionTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  34. 2014AdamTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  35. 2014GloVeELMo built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  36. 2014Seq2seq Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  37. 2014Attention Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  38. 2014GRU / encoder-decoderAttention built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  39. 2013word2vecELMo was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  40. 2011NLP from scratchELMo was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  41. 2003Neural LMNLP from scratch was influenced by this
    word2vec was influenced by this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  42. 1997LSTM Turning pointSeq2seq built directly on thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  43. 1990Recurrent networksLSTM was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  1. 2024Claude 3.5 SonnetThis milestone.
  2. 2024Claude 3Claude 3.5 Sonnet built directly on thisChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  3. 2023GPT-4 Turning pointClaude 3 was influenced by thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  4. 2023ClaudeClaude 3 built directly on thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  5. 2022Constitutional AIClaude 3 built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  6. 2022GPT-3.5 Turning pointGPT-4 succeeded thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  7. 2022HH-RLHFConstitutional AI built directly on this
    Claude was influenced by this    Chapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  8. 2022InstructGPT Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  9. 2022Chain of thought Turning pointConstitutional AI was influenced by thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  10. 2021HHH assistantHH-RLHF built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  11. 2021FLANInstructGPT was influenced by thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  12. 2020RLHF for summarisation Turning pointInstructGPT built directly on this
    HH-RLHF built directly on this    Chapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  13. 2020GPT-3 Turning pointChain of thought was influenced by this
    InstructGPT built directly on this
    GPT-3.5 built directly on this    Chapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  14. 2020Scaling laws Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  15. 2019T5 Turning pointFLAN was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  16. 2019C4 Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  17. 2019RLHF for LMsRLHF for summarisation built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  18. 2019Sparse Transformer Turning pointGPT-3 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  19. 2019GPT-2 Turning pointScaling laws was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  20. 2019WebTextGPT-2 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  21. 2019Transformer-XLSparse Transformer was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  22. 2018BERT Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  23. 2018SentencePieceT5 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  24. 2018GPT-1GPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  25. 2018ELMoGPT-1 was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  26. 2018ULMFiTGPT-1 was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  27. 2017CoVeELMo was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  28. 2017RLHF originConstitutional AI was influenced by thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  29. 2017Transformer Turning pointScaling laws built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  30. 2017ConvS2STransformer was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  31. 2016Layer normTransformer built directly on this
    GPT-2 built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  32. 2015Residual connectionsTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  33. 2015LM pretraining Turning pointGPT-1 was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  34. 2015BPE tokenizationGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  35. 2015Luong attentionTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  36. 2014AdamTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  37. 2014GloVeELMo built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  38. 2014Seq2seq Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  39. 2014Attention Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  40. 2014GRU / encoder-decoderAttention built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  41. 2013word2vecELMo was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  42. 2011NLP from scratchELMo was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  43. 2003Neural LMNLP from scratch was influenced by this
    word2vec was influenced by this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  44. 1997LSTM Turning pointSeq2seq built directly on thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  45. 1990Recurrent networksLSTM was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability

After: what it led to

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 12 documented descendants across 3 chapters, reaching forward to Claude Opus 5.5 in 2026. Showing its direct descendants.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 12 documented descendants across 3 chapters, reaching forward to Claude Opus 5.5 in 2026. Showing all of them.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 25 recorded descendants, including indirect ones, across 3 chapters, reaching forward to Claude Opus 5.5 in 2026. Showing its direct descendants.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 25 recorded descendants, including indirect ones, across 3 chapters, reaching forward to Claude Opus 5.5 in 2026. Showing all of them.

  1. 2024Claude 3.5 SonnetThis milestone.
  2. 2024Computer usebuilt directly on Claude 3.5 SonnetChapter 13. Models that act
  3. 2025Claude 3.7built directly on Claude 3.5 SonnetChapter 12. Thinking longer
  4. 2025Claude Codewas influenced by Computer use
    was influenced by Claude 3.7    Chapter 13. Models that act
  5. 2025Claude 4built directly on Claude 3.7Chapter 13. Models that act
  6. 2025Claude Sonnet 4.5built directly on Claude 4Chapter 13. Models that act
  7. 2025Claude Opus 4.5built directly on Claude Sonnet 4.5Chapter 13. Models that act
  8. 2026Claude Opus 4.6built directly on Claude Opus 4.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  9. 2026Claude Opus 4.7built directly on Claude Opus 4.6Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  10. 2026Claude Opus 4.8built directly on Claude Opus 4.7Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  11. 2026Claude Sonnet 5succeeded Claude Opus 4.8Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  12. 2026Claude Opus 5succeeded Claude Opus 4.8Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  13. 2026Claude Opus 5.5built directly on Claude Opus 5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  1. 2024Claude 3.5 SonnetThis milestone.
  2. 2024Computer usebuilt directly on Claude 3.5 SonnetChapter 13. Models that act
  3. 2024Gemini 2.0was influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  4. 2025Claude 3.7built directly on Claude 3.5 SonnetChapter 12. Thinking longer
  5. 2025Claude Codewas influenced by Computer use
    was influenced by Claude 3.7    Chapter 13. Models that act
  6. 2025Gemini 2.5built directly on Gemini 2.0Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  7. 2025Claude 4built directly on Claude 3.7Chapter 13. Models that act
  8. 2025IMO goldbuilt directly on Gemini 2.5Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  9. 2025Claude Sonnet 4.5built directly on Claude 4Chapter 13. Models that act
  10. 2025IMO-ProofBenchwas influenced by IMO goldChapter 12. Thinking longer
  11. 2025Gemini 3built directly on Gemini 2.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  12. 2025Claude Opus 4.5built directly on Claude Sonnet 4.5Chapter 13. Models that act
  13. 2026GPT-5.3-Codexwas influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 13. Models that act
  14. 2026Claude Opus 4.6built directly on Claude Opus 4.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  15. 2026Gemini 3 Deep Thinkbuilt directly on Gemini 3
    was influenced by IMO gold    Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  16. 2026Gemini 3.1built directly on Gemini 3Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  17. 2026GPT-5.4built directly on GPT-5.3-CodexChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  18. 2026Project Glasswingwas influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  19. 2026Claude Opus 4.7built directly on Claude Opus 4.6Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  20. 2026GPT-5.5built directly on GPT-5.4Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  21. 2026Claude Opus 4.8built directly on Claude Opus 4.7Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  22. 2026Claude Sonnet 5succeeded Claude Opus 4.8Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  23. 2026Fable 5 / Mythos 5was influenced by Project GlasswingChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  24. 2026GPT-5.6 Solbuilt directly on GPT-5.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  25. 2026Claude Opus 5succeeded Claude Opus 4.8Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  26. 2026Claude Opus 5.5built directly on Claude Opus 5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now

Direct links and their sources

Where it came from

Built directly on

What it led to

Built on directly by