GPT-4 is not getting worse • Hacker News Board

Re: GPT-4 is not getting worse

#11

Post by rendall » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 9:09 AM UTC

> I hate its craven, cringing, condescending, bitch-broken, mewling, groveling, wheedling, suck-ass tone. I hate its endless passive voice and weasel words. I hate its pompous It is important to remembers and it should be noteds.*

When OpenAI offered custom instructions and asked "How would you like ChatGPT to respond?" I wrote:

Be terse. Do not offer unprompted advice or clarifications.

Remain neutral on all topics.

Never apologize.

Immediately cleared up all that nonsense.

> me: I need to make an instructional video for graduate students. Any advice as to presentation?

> ChatGPT: Outline key points. Use visuals to complement speech. Engage the audience with questions or interactive elements. Ensure good audio and lighting. Rehearse before recording.

Glorious.

Re: GPT-4 is not getting worse

#12

Post by Madmallard » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 9:10 AM UTC

Theres at least a half dozen repeated queries with a 3+ month delay between in my chat history with chatGPT. The nerfing is that it does not try as hard to guess what you want and instead gives you a comment going “//fill this in” instead. This is with identical queries from February versus June or July. So that forces you at a minimum to query more. The other thing I noticed it doing is going “This is beyond the scope of X. Please speak with Y to get further information”. Extremely irritating responses that were not there in February for the exact same queries. Articles like this are paid actors.

Re: GPT-4 is not getting worse

#13

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 9:11 AM UTC

tempusalaria wrote: post #9

This is not conclusive at all. Broadly there are two possible reasons why ChatGPT could have degraded (not saying it has). 1) OpenAI have higher user base than expected, so costs are very high/compute is limited to serve the full model, so they are using speculative decoding with a changed threshold to reduce costs. 2) OpenAI have changed the weights or control structure of the model in a way that is negative for per…

[deleted]

Re: GPT-4 is not getting worse

#14

Post by coldtea » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 9:13 AM UTC

pxeger1 wrote: post #2

Interestingly, while skimming the front page, my brain autocorrected this to "GPT-4 is getting worse". We all have similar confirmation bias, I guess.

I read exactly the same and had to do a double take.

Re: GPT-4 is not getting worse

#15

Post by qsort » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 9:19 AM UTC

Xiol32 wrote: post #3

It isn't getting worse, people are just running up against its limitations more often.

There are no benchmarks worth the paper they're written on, so in a real sense nobody knows what they're talking about -- but my intuition is this as well.

If you use normal software, you are dealing with a constrained API. std::vector has .push_back() but has no .launch_icbm(), so it's rather easy to tell what it can or can't do.

These things come with an "ask me anything" interface, but that doesn't mean they can do everything, just that it's harder to see the limits.

Clever Hans effect + black box inside + unconstrained API + nondeterminism.

Re: GPT-4 is not getting worse

#16

Post by Sharlin » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 9:19 AM UTC

rendall wrote: post #11

> I hate its craven, cringing, condescending, bitch-broken, mewling, groveling, wheedling, suck-ass tone. I hate its endless passive voice and weasel words. I hate its pompous It is important to remembers and it should be noteds.* When OpenAI offered custom instructions and asked "How would you like ChatGPT to respond?" I wrote: Be terse. Do not offer unprompted advice or clarifications. Remain neutral on all topics.…

Yeah, it's totally a fixed problem now.

Re: GPT-4 is not getting worse

#17

Post by slissenburg » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 9:20 AM UTC

pxeger1 wrote: post #2

Interestingly, while skimming the front page, my brain autocorrected this to "GPT-4 is getting worse". We all have similar confirmation bias, I guess.

You're not alone, me too. Interesting.

Re: GPT-4 is not getting worse

#18

Post by ben_w » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 9:23 AM UTC

pxeger1 wrote: post #2

Interestingly, while skimming the front page, my brain autocorrected this to "GPT-4 is getting worse". We all have similar confirmation bias, I guess.

Huh, I didn't notice I'd done the exact same thing until reading your comment.

Re: GPT-4 is not getting worse

#19

Post by nwoli » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 9:23 AM UTC

I can only imagine how much worse it’ll get once the regulation they’re working on comes into place. A cartel of Microsoft and Google slowly watering down their public models while keeping the powerful ones to themselves or business partners

Re: GPT-4 is not getting worse

#20

Post by avar » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 9:23 AM UTC

rendall wrote: post #11

> I hate its craven, cringing, condescending, bitch-broken, mewling, groveling, wheedling, suck-ass tone. I hate its endless passive voice and weasel words. I hate its pompous It is important to remembers and it should be noteds.* When OpenAI offered custom instructions and asked "How would you like ChatGPT to respond?" I wrote: Be terse. Do not offer unprompted advice or clarifications. Remain neutral on all topics.…

    > Remain neutral on all topics.

Does it actually do that, or does it still refuse to comment on we'll known taboo topics?