Anthropic’s latest AI updates might be coming for your job (or at least the boring parts of it).
On Thursday, the startup unveiled Claude 4 Opus and Claude Sonnet 4, the newest members of its Claude AI family. Claude 4 Opus can independently execute complex, multi-hour work tasks for nearly seven hours in a row without a prompt refresh. In other words, the AI can now pull something close to a full-time shift, no manager micromanaging required.
“AI agents powered by Opus 4 and Sonnet 4 can analyze thousands of data sources, execute long-running tasks, write human-quality content, and perform complex actions,” Anthropic said in a statement.
White painted a picture of Claude helping a marketer dissect advertising performance and build a new strategy from scratch—no hand-holding necessary.
The timing is no coincidence. According to Menlo Ventures, enterprise spending on generative AI ballooned sixfold in 2024.
Anthropic, backed by Amazon and Google, is now not just catching up to OpenAI but actively carving into its market dominance. Claude 4 Opus is being hailed by Anthropic as the best coding AI on the market, going toe-to-toe with OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s new GitHub tools.
“It’s basically the ability for Claude to think and reason deeply over a long period of time about your goal,” said Scott White, Anthropic’s product lead, at the company’s first developer event in San Francisco.
ADVERTISEMENT
Of course, not everyone is cheering. The World Economic Forum reported that 41% of employers expect to downsize as AI becomes more capable. Even LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer has voiced concern that entry-level jobs might vanish first.
Still, Anthropic insists it’s not about eliminating roles but liberating people from the “30% of your day” that’s tedious and non-creative.
In an industry that often values speed over nuance, Anthropic also introduced new safety measures and more transparent reasoning in its models.
