Anthropic's AI can now run and write code
Anthropic has released a new feature for its Claude chatbot that allows it to run and write code for more precise answers.
Today, Anthropic launched a new analysis tool that helps Claude respond with what the company describes as “mathematically precise and reproducible answers.” With the tool enabled — it’s currently in preview — Claude can perform calculations and analyze data from files like spreadsheets and PDFs, rendering the results as interactive visualizations.
“Think of the analysis tool as a built-in code sandbox, where Claude can do complex math, analyze data, and iterate on different ideas before sharing an answer,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post. “Instead of relying on abstract analysis alone, it can systematically process your data — cleaning, exploring, and analyzing it step-by-step until it reaches the correct result.”
Anthropic gives a few examples of where this might be useful. For instance, a product manager could upload sales data and ask Claude for country-specific performance analysis, while an engineer could give Claude monthly financial data and have it create a dashboard highlighting key trends.
Claude could attempt these tasks before. But, because it lacked a mechanism to mathematically verify the results, the answers weren’t always incredibly accurate.
Google offers a comparable feature for its Gemini models called Code Execution, which lets the models generate and run Python code to learn iteratively from the results. OpenAI’s flagship models similarly can write and execute code via a capability that the company calls Advanced Data Analysis.
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