---
title: "Intelligence on tap is addictive"
description: "The smarter AI gets, the harder it is to go back. On Claude Fable, the intelligence ratchet, and why the cost stops mattering once you get used to it."
date: 2026-06-10
image: "/uploads/2026/06/the-fables-of-la-fontaine.jpg"
categories:
  - "AI"
  - "Future"
---

Yesterday Anthropic released [Claude Fable and Mythos](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5). It is a big step in intelligence. The new models solve more complex problems with less interaction and work on their own for longer. They also cost more.

And that is the interesting part. Not the price itself, but what happens to you when you start using something this smart. Because machine intelligence is addictive. The smarter AI gets, the more you get used to having that kind of intelligence on tap.

## The ratchet only turns one way

Every new model generation resets your baseline. What felt magical six months ago becomes the minimum you accept today.

I notice this in myself. I would have a hard time going back to a less intelligent model than Opus 4.8 for daily use. Not because older models are bad. They are amazing by any historical standard. But I am used to a certain level now. I know what a good answer looks like, how few attempts a hard problem should take, how much I can hand over without explaining every detail. Anything below that level feels like friction.

It works like a ratchet. It only turns one way. Once you have worked at a certain level of intelligence, going back feels almost impossible. Let us see if that holds with Fable. My guess is that after a few weeks I will want to use it for everything.

## The cost disappears when it becomes normal

The new models are more expensive. That is the first thing people react to. But cost perception is relative, and it fades fast.

When a model solves a problem that would have taken me days, or that I could not have solved at all, the price stops being the question. If you use it for real work, the cost is still low compared to what it replaces. A few dollars for hours of senior level reasoning is not expensive. It just feels expensive because last year the same thing cost cents.

This is how every utility works. Electricity, broadband, cloud computing. The price discussion is loud at first, then the capability becomes part of how you work, and the cost becomes a line item nobody questions. Intelligence is becoming a utility, and utilities are invisible until they are gone.

## What I am seeing so far

I have only used Fable for a short time, but I am really impressed with the level of reasoning and how it handles genuinely hard problems. It stays on track over long sessions, asks for less hand holding, and gets further on its own before it needs me.

Not every solution is a one shot solution. It still gets things wrong and still needs direction. But the trajectory is clear. Each generation needs less of me to produce more. That changes how I work. I spend less time steering and more time deciding what is worth building in the first place.

## How addictive will this get?

So where does this go? If every generation is smarter, more autonomous and more expensive, and if every generation resets our baseline, then the addiction only deepens.

I think this is what progress will feel like from now on. Not one big moment where AI changes everything, but a series of releases where each one quietly raises your personal minimum. Individuals will feel it first. Then companies, when teams that work at a higher intelligence baseline start outpacing teams that do not. At some point, working without frontier intelligence will feel like working without the internet.

Is that a problem? Maybe a dependence on intelligence is the most productive addiction we have ever had. But it is worth being honest about what is happening. We are not just adopting a tool. We are getting used to a level of thinking, and we will not want to give it up.

I said that [what you do in the next few years will matter more than what you did in the last ten](/thoughts/2026-looking-ahead). This is one more reason why. The people who raise their baseline early will be the ones everyone else is trying to catch up to.