NLP Lineage

4 March 2024 · Alignment

Claude 3

The Claude 3 model family

Anthropic

Date
4 March 2024
What the date marks
Announcement
Kind
Model
Organisation
Anthropic
Access
API only
Other dates
Haiku 2024-03-13
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 6 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

GPT-4 had held the frontier alone for a year.

The problem

No competitor had matched it across the board, and one model size fits no one.

What it introduced

Three sizes with a shared capability profile, vision input and 200K context, with Opus matching or beating GPT-4.

Why it matters

It ended GPT-4's uncontested lead and made tiered model families the standard product shape.

What modern models inherit

The small, medium, large family with one interface.

What came next

Claude 3.5 Sonnet showed a mid-tier could beat the previous flagship.

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 has 41 documented ancestors across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 17 turning points among them.

Claude 3 has 41 documented ancestors across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

Claude 3 has 43 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 17 turning points among them.

Claude 3 has 43 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

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

After: what it led to

Claude 3 has 13 documented descendants across 3 chapters, reaching forward to Claude Opus 5.5 in 2026. Showing its direct descendants.

Claude 3 has 13 documented descendants across 3 chapters, reaching forward to Claude Opus 5.5 in 2026. Showing all of them.

Claude 3 has 26 recorded descendants, including indirect ones, across 3 chapters, reaching forward to Claude Opus 5.5 in 2026. Showing its direct descendants.

Claude 3 has 26 recorded descendants, including indirect ones, across 3 chapters, reaching forward to Claude Opus 5.5 in 2026. Showing all of them.

  1. 2024Claude 3This milestone.
  2. 2024Claude 3.5 Sonnetbuilt directly on Claude 3Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  3. 2024Computer usebuilt directly on Claude 3.5 SonnetChapter 13. Models that act
  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. 2025Claude 4succeeded Claude 3Chapter 13. Models that act
  7. 2025Claude Sonnet 4.5built directly on Claude 4Chapter 13. Models that act
  8. 2025Claude Opus 4.5built directly on Claude Sonnet 4.5Chapter 13. Models that act
  9. 2026Claude Opus 4.6built directly on Claude Opus 4.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  10. 2026Claude Opus 4.7built directly on Claude Opus 4.6Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  11. 2026Claude Opus 4.8built directly on Claude Opus 4.7Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  12. 2026Claude Sonnet 5succeeded Claude Opus 4.8Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  13. 2026Claude Opus 5succeeded Claude Opus 4.8Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  14. 2026Claude Opus 5.5built directly on Claude Opus 5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  1. 2024Claude 3This milestone.
  2. 2024Claude 3.5 Sonnetbuilt directly on Claude 3Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  3. 2024Computer usebuilt directly on Claude 3.5 SonnetChapter 13. Models that act
  4. 2024Gemini 2.0was influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  5. 2025Claude 3.7built directly on Claude 3.5 SonnetChapter 12. Thinking longer
  6. 2025Claude Codewas influenced by Computer use
    was influenced by Claude 3.7    Chapter 13. Models that act
  7. 2025Gemini 2.5built directly on Gemini 2.0Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  8. 2025Claude 4succeeded Claude 3Chapter 13. Models that act
  9. 2025IMO goldbuilt directly on Gemini 2.5Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  10. 2025Claude Sonnet 4.5built directly on Claude 4Chapter 13. Models that act
  11. 2025IMO-ProofBenchwas influenced by IMO goldChapter 12. Thinking longer
  12. 2025Gemini 3built directly on Gemini 2.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  13. 2025Claude Opus 4.5built directly on Claude Sonnet 4.5Chapter 13. Models that act
  14. 2026GPT-5.3-Codexwas influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 13. Models that act
  15. 2026Claude Opus 4.6built directly on Claude Opus 4.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  16. 2026Gemini 3 Deep Thinkbuilt directly on Gemini 3
    was influenced by IMO gold    Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  17. 2026Gemini 3.1built directly on Gemini 3Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  18. 2026GPT-5.4built directly on GPT-5.3-CodexChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  19. 2026Project Glasswingwas influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  20. 2026Claude Opus 4.7built directly on Claude Opus 4.6Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  21. 2026GPT-5.5built directly on GPT-5.4Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  22. 2026Claude Opus 4.8built directly on Claude Opus 4.7Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  23. 2026Claude Sonnet 5succeeded Claude Opus 4.8Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  24. 2026Fable 5 / Mythos 5was influenced by Project GlasswingChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  25. 2026GPT-5.6 Solbuilt directly on GPT-5.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  26. 2026Claude Opus 5succeeded Claude Opus 4.8Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  27. 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

Influenced by

What it led to

Built on directly by

Replaced by