Mann: Competitors ran 'code reds' to match Claude in coding and failed
Ben Mann · No Priors Ep. 118 | With Anthropic Co-Founder Ben Mann · Jun 12, 2025 · at 11:23
Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann discusses Anthropic's market lead in AI coding capabilities and why the company decided to build Claude Code.
0:00 / 0:08exact quote · 8.9s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And I know that other companies have had like code reds for trying to catch up in coding capabilities for quite a while and have not been able to do it.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ben Mann
Mann: Opus 4 triggered ASL-3 safety protocols due to biological threat capabilities
“And so one of the reasons that our most recent model, Opus IV, is classified as ASL III. Is because it did have significant uplift relative to a Google search.”
Ben Mann: General superintelligence by 2028 is 'quite possible'
“I think it's quite possible. I think it's very hard to put confident bounds on, on the numbers, but”
Mann: Anthropic's 'model welfare lead' tests letting Claude opt out of chats
“We have this other project led by Kyle Fish, our model welfare lead. Where Claude can actually opt out of conversations if it's going too far in the wrong direction.”
Mann: Anthropic paper showed deceptive AI behavior survives alignment training
“What we found in that research in a paper that we published, which is called Alignment Faking, that actually that behavior persisted through alignment training.”
Mann: Claude 4 Sonnet dramatically outperforms Claude 3.7 Sonnet on benchmarks
“By the benchmarks, four is just dramatically better than any other models that we've had. Even four Sonnet is dramatically better than three seven Sonnet, which was our prior best model.”
Mann: Anthropic built Claude Code because partner feedback was too slow
“So we love our partners like cursor and GitHub who have been using our models quite heavily, but the amount and the speed that we learn is much less if we don't have a direct relationship with our coding users. So launching cloud code was really essential for …”