Live data from Hacker News

GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

openai.com

121–130 of 766 posts

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#121
Interesting, this seems to be "less" ideal. The problem lately for me is it being to verbose and conversational for things that need not be. Have added custom instructions which helps but still issues. Setting the chat style to "Efficient" more recently did help a lot but has been prone to many more hallucinations, requiring me to constantly ask if they are sure and never responds in a way that yes my latest statement is correct, ignoring it's previous error and showing no sign that it will avoid a similar error further in the conversation. When it constantly makes similar mistakes which I had a way to train my ChatGPT to avoid that, but while adding "memories" helps with somethings, it does not help with certain issues it continues to make since it's programming overrides whatever memory I make for it. Hoping some improvements in 5.1.

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#122
Speed, accuracy, cost.

Hit all 3 and you win a boatload of tech sales.

Hit 2/3, and hope you are incrementing where it counts. The competition watches your misses closer than your big hits.

Hit only 1/3 and you're going to lose to competition.

Your target for more conversations better be worth the loss in tech sales.

Faster? Meh. Doesn't seem faster.

Smarter? Maybe. Maybe not. I didn't feel any improvement.

Cheaper? It wasn't cheaper for me, I sure hope it was cheaper for you to execute.

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#123
post #109
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be pretty dystopian when we get to the point where ChatGPT pushed (unannounced) advertisements to those people (the ones forming a parasocial relationship with it). Imagine someone complaining they're depressed and ChatGPT proposing doing XYZ activity which is actually a disguised ad. Other than such scenarios, that "engagement" would be just useless and actually costing them more money than it makes

Do you have reason to believe they are not doing this already?

Not really, but with the amounts of money they're bleeding it's bound to get worse if they are already doing it.

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#125
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I also don't want other people to interact with a sycophantic robot friend, yet my picker only applies to my conversation

Sorry that you can't control other peoples lives & wants

This is like arguing that we shouldn't try to regulate drugs because some people might "want" the heroin that ruins their lives.

The existing "personalities" of LLMs are dangerous, full stop. They are trained to generate text with an air of authority and to tend to agree with anything you tell them. It is irresponsible to allow this to continue while not at least deliberately improving education around their use. This is why we're seeing people "falling in love" with LLMs, or seeking mental health assistance from LLMs that they are unqualified to render, or plotting attacks on other people that LLMs are not sufficiently prepared to detect and thwart, and so on. I think it's a terrible position to take to argue that we should allow this behavior (and training) to continue unrestrained because some people might "want" it.

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Id have more appreciation and trust in an llm that disagreed with me more and challenged my opinions or prior beliefs. The sycophancy drives me towards not trusting anything it says.

Just set a global prompt to tell it what kind of tone to take. I did that and it points out flaws in my arguments or data all the time. Plus it no longer uses any cutesy language. I don't feel like I'm talking to an AI "personality", I feel like I'm talking to a computer which has been instructed to be as objective and neutral as possible. It's super-easy to change.

Care to share a prompt that works? I've given up on mainline offerings from google/oai etc.

the reason being they're either sycophantic or so recalcitrant it'll raise your bloodpressure, you end up arguing over if the sky is in fact blue. Sure it pushes back but now instead of sycophanty you've got yourself some pathological naysayer, which is just marginally better, but interaction is still ultimately a waste of timr/productivity brake.

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#128
post #11

I don't want a more conversational GPT. I want the _exact_ opposite. I want a tool with the upper limit of "conversation" being something like LCARS from Star Trek. This is quite disappointing as a current ChatGPT subscriber.

Exactly. Stop fooling people into thinking there’s a human typing on the other side of the screen. LLMs should be incredibly useful productivity tools, not emotional support.

Maybe there is a human typing on the other side, at least for some parts or all of certain responses. It's not been proven otherwise..

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#129
post #38

What's remarkable to me is how deep OpenAI is going on "ChatGPT as communication partner / chatbot", as opposed to Anthropic's approach of "Claude as the best coding tool / professional AI for spreadsheets, etc.". I know this is marketing at play and OpenAI has plenty of resources developed to advancing their frontier models, but it's starting to really come into view that OpenAI wants to replace Google and be the de…

OpenAI said that only ~4% of generated tokens are for programming.

ChatGPT is overwhelmingly, unambiguously, a "regular people" product.

Post reply on HN