Claude Code's Insidious Progressive Intelligence (bertolami.com)

The recent exploration of Claude Code highlights a significant challenge in AI model performance over time, particularly in subscription-based services. Users have noted a marked decline in the quality of outputs as the day progresses, accompanied by increased response times and errors. This phenomenon is attributed to two main factors: constant model versioning by providers and cost-cutting measures that may inadvertently impact specific prompt responses. The findings indicate that while pay-per-token models maintain consistent intelligence levels, subscription services can experience up to a 42% drop in performance during peak usage times due to economic-driven throttling. This insight is crucial for the AI/ML community as it suggests that user experience can vary considerably based on economic model choices, challenging the assumption of constant AI performance. As providers look to optimize their services for cost, users might have to adapt their strategies to ensure productivity, potentially leading to a future where choices in AI services depend more on daily compute quotas than on initial capabilities. The implications extend to engineering tasks, where a decline in cognitive consistency could hinder complex problem-solving, urging developers to explore diverse subscription options for maintaining performance quality.