They just trying to register the model names into our mind. Now a days we remember Fable, Opus, Sonnet. I think Google trying to do the same.

Problem is we have no idea here what it should mean.

Carbon is the next version of Argon. But Hydrogen is supposed to coexist with Carbon. Also no idea where the scheme is coming from, what elements should we expect.

Also I intuitively get that a sonnet is "shorter" than an opus (although Fable is less clear) - I have no idea what i'm even supposed to be comparing with google elements... Atomic number? I know hydrogen is the lowest and i guess argon is bigger than carbon but am I expected to know that? Or is it by weight? Argon's a gas so it's lighter than Carbon?

The sol/terra/astra, haiku/sonnet/opus clicked without needing to be explained

A mythos is longer than an opus.

A fable is a tame mythos.

Fable and Mythos describe the stories Anthropic is telling investors.

Is Carbon the next version of Argon? My understanding was that Argon is the middle-tier model (somewhere between OpenAI's Terra and Sol in position) whereas Carbon is supposed to be like Astra. This is assuming they don't have an even higher tier model upcoming, in which case Argon ~ Terra, Carbon ~ Sol and Element X (Plutonium?) ~ Astra.

Wild guess: maybe they are going with how abundant the elements are to scale the models. I'm no chemist so I don't know reliably how the relative abundance of Argon and Carbon works out, but Hydrogen is "well-known" as the most abundant element in the universe, so maybe that's why its the base model. But, this is essentially a trend of one, so not a trend at all, unless someone can verify it still works for Argon and Carbon.

If you look at Google's API pricing, Gemini 4 Carbon and Gemini 4 Argon are the same while Gemini 4 Hydrogen and Gemini 3.8 Flash are the same (ignoring promotional pricing).

Intuitively, Argon is 4 Pro, Carbon is 4.1 Pro, and Hydrogen is 4.1 Flash (slightly better than Argon according to benchmarks).

> Carbon is the next version of Argon. But Hydrogen is supposed to coexist with Carbon. Also no idea where the scheme is coming from, what elements should we expect.

The problem with using elements names simultaneously as both version numbers and product tiers, is that inevitably you will face a confusing collision or you will exhaust the space.

Openai/anthropic's model names have the same issue too

In my company they are also hosted GLM 5.3 in their on-prem have us a unlimited tokens. It does a decent job, I would say.

But why do you think it's not good apart from budget?

Location: Bengaluru, India

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No (open to remote-first roles; can discuss occasional travel)

Technologies: Go, Rust, eBPF, Kubernetes, Kafka, PostgreSQL, distributed systems, Linux internals

Resume/CV: yasindce1998.github.io

Email: [email protected]

Backend engineer and security researcher with 5+ years of experience building distributed systems (Go, Kafka, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL/YugabyteDB, Redis), including geospatial/delivery infrastructure for retail clients.

Over the past year I've shifted focus toward offensive/defensive security tooling at the kernel and cluster level:

Warmor – cross-platform eBPF+WASM runtime security policy engine (SBOM + audit-mode policy generation)

KubeDagger – offensive Kubernetes security framework NeuronTrace – kernel-level behavioral containment for AI agent harnesses

Barzakh – UEFI firmware security research platform (Ring 0–Ring -4)

aegis-shadow – dual offensive/defensive eBPF rootkit in Rust

All open source: github.com/yasindce1998

Looking for backend engineering or security engineering roles (platform security, detection engineering, or systems/infra) where I can keep working close to the kernel. Comfortable owning things end-to-end, from design through production.