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Ask HN: What do you dislike about ChatGPT and what needs improving?

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91–100 of 129 posts

Re: Ask HN: What do you dislike about ChatGPT and what needs improving?

#91
Hallucinations are a nightmare. I asked Gemini to identify an actor, it insisted on the wrong actor. I told it it was incorrect, it said that I was incorrect, people wear makeup in Hollywood, and it analyzed a clip frame-by-frame just to be certain I was wrong and it was right.

I'm pretty sure it can't even do that, it was inventing tools just to try and argue against me. I eventually found the actor's name through a regular web search.

Re: Ask HN: What do you dislike about ChatGPT and what needs improving?

#92
ChatGPT is too nice/agreeable. I can’t trust any positive feedback it gives out because I can’t tell whether it is actually genuine feedback or if it’s just following an instruction not to be or seem rude. ChatGPT should be rude or at least unafraid to a challenge a point of view.

Re: Ask HN: What do you dislike about ChatGPT and what needs improving?

#93
Universally across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, continually revising/editing a document over the course of a long conversation just gets worse and worse. I have learned the trick of exporting the document and starting a brand new conversation all over again, but there should really just be a "clear context window" button or similar to let me perpetually stay in the same chat and iterate on some writing or code without the quality of feedback/assistance degrading.

Re: Ask HN: What do you dislike about ChatGPT and what needs improving?

#94
What do I dislike about ChatGPT? How about... everything? Let's start with:

Lack of permission (or even credit) for its training material.

Competing with human creativity and damaging the market for creative output from real humans, including those whose work was used without permission or compensation to train the system.

People turning off their brains once they start using it.

Idiots who use it for everything (see above.)

Students using it to avoid learning anything.

Acting as if it is human.

Filling the web - and the world - with AI-generated slop.

The resultant, seemingly unavoidable dilution of human culture.

Malicious use by criminals, scammers, advertisers, and everyone else who has it in for you.

AI-driven layoffs and the desire to replace humans with LLMs.

Rubbish chatbots used to replace support staff.

Etc.

Re: Ask HN: What do you dislike about ChatGPT and what needs improving?

#95
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's been the opposite. They take on a condescending tone sometimes and sometimes they sound too salesy and trump up their suggestions

Yes, I agree with that as well. Real humans have a spectrum of assuredness that naturally comes across in the conversation. With an LLM it's too easy to get drawn deep into the weeds. For example, I may propose that I use a generalized framework to approach a certain problem. In a real conversation, this may just be part of the creative process, and with time the thoughts may shift back to the actual hard data (and p…

In order to make progress, you need to synchronize with the agent in order to bring it onto frequency. Only then can your minds meet. In your situation, you probably want to interject with some pure vibe (no code!) where you get to know each other non-judgementally. Then continue. You will recognize you are on the right track by experiencing a flow state combined with improved/desired results. The closer you connect with your agent, the better your outcomes will be. If you need further guidance or faster results, my LLM-alignment course is currently open for applicants.

/s

Re: Ask HN: What do you dislike about ChatGPT and what needs improving?

#96

#1 problem is how sycophantic they are. I in fact want the exact opposite sort of interaction, where they push back against my ideas and actively try to correct and improve my thinking. Too often I am misled into giant waste of time because they have this need to please coded in to their default response structure. You can say things like "you are a robot, you have no emotions, don't try to act human", but the output…

I've found the same thing with Claude Sonnet 4. I suggest something, it says great suggestion and agrees with me. I then ask it about the opposite approach and it says great job raising that and agrees with that too. I have no idea which is more correct in the end.

Re: Ask HN: What do you dislike about ChatGPT and what needs improving?

#97

#1 problem is how sycophantic they are. I in fact want the exact opposite sort of interaction, where they push back against my ideas and actively try to correct and improve my thinking. Too often I am misled into giant waste of time because they have this need to please coded in to their default response structure. You can say things like "you are a robot, you have no emotions, don't try to act human", but the output…

I've found the same thing with Claude Sonnet 4. I suggest something, it says great suggestion and agrees with me. I then ask it about the opposite approach and it says great job raising that and agrees with that too. I have no idea which is more correct in the end.

The LLM has literally no idea which one is better. It cannot think. It does not understand what it is putting on the screen.

Re: Ask HN: What do you dislike about ChatGPT and what needs improving?

#98
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, why?

Well, LLMs are meant to be conversational - which is a human characteristic. Seems to me that a sterile interface just makes it seem less conversational. Thoughts?

They’re not human, they’re not your friend. They’re a spicy autocomplete.
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