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Sycophancy in GPT-4o

openai.com

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Re: Sycophancy in GPT-4o

#151

Post by jll29 »

imgabe wrote: post #145
dpfu wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won‘t take long, 2-3 minutes. ——- To add something to conversation. For me, this mainly shows a strategy to keep users longer in chat conversations: linguistic design as an engagement device.

Why would OpenAI want users to be in longer conversations? It's not like they're showing ads. Users are either free or paying a fixed monthly fee. Having longer conversations just increases costs for OpenAI and reduces their profit. Their model is more like a gym where you want the users who pay the monthly fee and never show up. If it were on the api where users are paying by the token that would make sense (but be…

> It's not like they're showing ads.

Not yet. But the "buy this" button is already in the code of the back end, according to online reports that I cannot verify.

Official word is here: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11146633-improved-shoppi...

If I was Amazon, I wouldn't sleep so well anymore.

Re: Sycophancy in GPT-4o

#154

Post by leumon »

imgabe wrote: post #145
dpfu wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won‘t take long, 2-3 minutes. ——- To add something to conversation. For me, this mainly shows a strategy to keep users longer in chat conversations: linguistic design as an engagement device.

Why would OpenAI want users to be in longer conversations? It's not like they're showing ads. Users are either free or paying a fixed monthly fee. Having longer conversations just increases costs for OpenAI and reduces their profit. Their model is more like a gym where you want the users who pay the monthly fee and never show up. If it were on the api where users are paying by the token that would make sense (but be…

Possibly to get more training data.

Re: Sycophancy in GPT-4o

#155

Post by worldsayshi »

bagels wrote: post #106
josephg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a recent Lex Friedman podcast episode where they interviewed a few people at Anthropic. One woman (I don't know her name) seems to be in charge of Claude's personality, and her job is to figure out answers to questions exactly like this. She said in the podcast that she wants claude to respond to most questions like a "good friend". A good friend would be supportive, but still push back when you're making b…

I wish we could pick for ourselves.

Whould we be able to pick that PI == 4?

Re: Sycophancy in GPT-4o

#156

Post by jumploops »

This feels like the biggest near-term harm of “AI” so far.

For context, I pay attention to a handful of “AI” subreddits/FB groups, and have seen a recent uptick in users who have fallen for this latest system prompt/model.

From conspiracy theory “confirmations” and 140+ IQ analyses, to full-on illusions of grandeur, this latest release might be the closest example of non theoretical near-term damage.

Armed with the “support” of a “super intelligent” robot, who knows what tragedies some humans may cause…

As an example, this Redditor[0] is afraid that their significant other (of 7 years!) seems to be quickly diving into full on psychosis.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1kalae8/chatgpt_in...

Re: Sycophancy in GPT-4o

#158

Post by trosi »

I was initially puzzled by the title of this article because a "sycophant" in my native language (Italian) is a "snitch" or a "slanderer", usually one paid to be so. I am just finding out that the English meaning is different, interesting!

Re: Sycophancy in GPT-4o

#159

Post by LandR »

mvkel wrote: post #37

I am curious where the line is between its default personality and a persona you -want- it to adopt. For example, it says they're explicitly steering it away from sycophancy. But does that mean if you intentionally ask it to be excessively complimentary, it will refuse? Separately... > in this update, we focused too much on short-term feedback, and did not fully account for how users’ interactions with ChatGPT evolve…

I dont want my AI to have a personality at all.

Re: Sycophancy in GPT-4o

#160

Post by ignoramous »

josephg wrote: post #60
firtoz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How should it respond in this case? Should it say "no go back to your meds, spirituality is bullshit" in essence? Or should it tell the user that it's not qualified to have an opinion on this?

There was a recent Lex Friedman podcast episode where they interviewed a few people at Anthropic. One woman (I don't know her name) seems to be in charge of Claude's personality, and her job is to figure out answers to questions exactly like this. She said in the podcast that she wants claude to respond to most questions like a "good friend". A good friend would be supportive, but still push back when you're making b…

> One woman (I don't know her name) seems to be in charge of Claude's personality, and her job is to figure out answers to questions exactly like this.

Surely there's a team and it isn't just one person? Hope they employ folks from social studies like Anthropology, and take them seriously.

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