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GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

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

#231
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.

Your comment reminded me of this article becasue of the Star Trek comparison. Chatting is inefficient, isn't it?

[1] https://jdsemrau.substack.com/p/how-should-agentic-user-expe...

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

#232
post #3

Interesting that they're releasing separate gpt-5.1-instant and gpt-5.1-thinking models. The previous gpt-5 release made of point of simplifying things by letting the model choose if it was going to use thinking tokens or not. Seems like they reversed course on that?

From what I recall for the GPT5 release, free users didn't have the option to pick between instant and thinking, they just got auto which picked for them. Paid users have always had the option to pick between thinking or instant or auto.

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I think normies maybe do want a more conversational ChatGPT. The backlash from GPT-5 proved that. The normies want a very different LLM from what you or I might want, and unfortunately OpenAI seems to be moving in a more direct-to-consumer focus and catering to that. But I'm really concerned. People don't understand this technology, at all. The way they talk to it, the suicide stories, etc. point to people in ge…

I just cannot imagine myself sitting just “chatting away” with an AI. It makes me feel quite sick to even contemplate it. Another person I was talking to recently kept referring to ChatGPT as “she”. “She told me X”, “and I said to her…” Very very odd, and very worrying. As you say, a big education problem. The interesting thing is that a lot of these people are folk who are on the edges of digital literacy - people w…

As a counterpoint, I've been using my own PC since I was 6 and know reasonably well about the innards of LLMs and agentic AI, and absolutely love this ability to hold a conversation with an AI.

Earlier today, procrastinating from work, I spent an hour and a half talking with it about the philosophy of religion and had a great time, learning a ton. Sometimes I do just want a quick response to get things done, but I find living in a world where I'm able to just dive into a deep conversation with a machine that has read the entirety of the internet is incredible.

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

#234
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, consider asking "why's that?" if you don't know what is a fairly basic fact, no need to go all reddit-pretentious "citation needed" as if we are deeply and knowledgeably discussing some niche detail and came across a sudden surprising fact. Anyways, a nice way to understand it is that the LLM needs to "compute" the answer to the question A or B. Some questions need more compute to answer (think complexi…

A citation would be a link to an authoritative source. Just because some unknown person claims it's obvious that's not sufficient for some of us.

Expecting every little fact to have an "authoritative source" is just annoying faux intellectualism. You can ask someone why they believe something and listen to their reasoning, decide for yourself if you find it convincing, without invoking such a pretentious phrase. There are conclusions you can think to and reach without an "official citation".

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

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point the OP is making is that LLMs are not reliably able to provide safe and effective emotional support as has been outlined by recent cases. We're in uncharted territory and before LLMs become emotional companions for people, we should better understand what the risks and tradeoffs are.

I wonder if statistically (hand waving here, I’m so not an expert in this field) the SOTA models do as much or as little harm as their human counterparts in terms of providing safe and effective emotional support. Totally agree we should better understand the risks and trade offs but I wouldn’t be super surprised if they are statistically no worse than us meat bags this kind of stuff.

One difference is that if it were found that a psychiatrist or other professional had encouraged a patient's delusions or suicidal tendencies, then that person would likely lose his/her license and potentially face criminal penalties.

We know that humans should be able to consider the consequences of their actions and thus we hold them accountable (generally).

I'd be surprised if comparisons in the self-driving space have not been made: if waymo is better than the average driver, but still gets into an accident, who should be held accountable?

Though we also know that with big corporations, even clear negligence that leads to mass casualties does not often result in criminal penalties (e.g., Boeing).

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

#236

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.

This is why I like Kimi K2/Thinking. IME it pushes back really, really hard on any kind of non obvious belief or statement, and it doesn't give up after a few turns — it just keeps going, iterating and refining and restating its points if you change your mind or taken on its criticisms. It's great for having a dialectic around something you've written, although somewhat unsatisfying because it'll never agree with you…

Which agent do you use it with?

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

#237
post #217
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I didn't like the Robot / Efficient mode because it would give very short answers without much explanation or background. "Nerdy" seems to be the best, except with GPT-5 instant it's extremely cringy like "I'm putting my nerd hat on - since you're a software engineer I'll make sure to give you the geeky details about making rice." "Low" thinking is typically the sweet spot for me - way smarter than instant with…

I hate its acknowledgement of its personality prompt. Try having a series of back and forth and each response is like “got it, keeping it short and professional. Yes, there are only seven deadly sins.” You get more prompt performance than answer.

I like the term prompt performance; I am definitely going to use it:

> prompt performance (n.)

> the behaviour of a language model in which it conspicuously showcases or exaggerates how well it is following a given instruction or persona, drawing attention to its own effort rather than simply producing the requested output.

:)

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

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I like Kimi K2/Thinking. IME it pushes back really, really hard on any kind of non obvious belief or statement, and it doesn't give up after a few turns — it just keeps going, iterating and refining and restating its points if you change your mind or taken on its criticisms. It's great for having a dialectic around something you've written, although somewhat unsatisfying because it'll never agree with you…

Which agent do you use it with?

I use K2 non thinking in OpenCode for coding typically, and I still haven't found a satisfactory chat interface yet so I use K2 Thinking in the default synthetic.new (my AI subscription) chat UI, which is pretty barebones. I'm gonna start trying K2T in OpenCode as well, but I'm actually not a huge fan of thinking models as coding agents — I prefer faster feedback.

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just tell the AI to not be warm and it will remember. My ChatGPT used the phrase "turn it up to eleven" and I told it never to speak in that manner ever again and its been very robotic ever since.

I added the custom instruction "Please go straight to the point, be less chatty". Now it begins every answer with: "Straight to the point, no fluff:" or something similar. It seems to be perfectly unable to simply write out the answer without some form of small talk first.

This is very funny.

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

#240
If you don't have access here are some sample conversations:

https://chatgpt.com/share/6914f65d-20dc-800f-b5c4-16ae767dce...

https://chatgpt.com/share/6914f67b-d628-800f-a358-2f4cd71b23...

https://chatgpt.com/share/6914f697-ff4c-800f-a65a-c99a9d2206...

https://chatgpt.com/share/6914f691-4ef0-800f-bb22-b6271b0e86...

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