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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

#281
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. If i tell it to choose A or B, I want it to output either “A” or “B”. I don’t want an essay of 10 pages about how this is exactly the right question to ask

LLMs have essentially no capability for internal thought. They can't produce the right answer without doing that. Of course, you can use thinking mode and then it'll just hide that part from you.

They already do hide alot from you when thinking, this person wants them to hide more instead of doing their 'thinking' 'out loud' in the response.

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

#283

All the examples of "warmer" generations show that OpenAI's definition of warmer is synonymous with sycophantic , which is a surprise given all the criticism against that particular aspect of ChatGPT. I suspect this approach is a direct response to the backlash against removing 4o.

I think it's extremely important to distinguish being friendly (perhaps overly so), and agreeing with the user when they're wrong The first case is just preference, the second case is materially damaging From my experience, ChatGPT does push back more than it used to

And unfortunately chatgpt 5.1 would be a step backwards in that regard. From reading responses on the linked article, 5.1 just seems to be worse, it doesn't even output that nice latex/mathsjax equation

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI said that only ~4% of generated tokens are for programming. ChatGPT is overwhelmingly, unambiguously, a "regular people" product.

Yes, just look at the stats on OpenRouter. OpenAI has almost totally lost the programming market.

I use codex high because Anthropic CC max plan started fucking people over who want to use opus. Sonnet kind of stinks on more complex problems that opus can crush, but they want to force sonnet usage and maybe they want to save costs.

Codex 5 high does a great job for the advanced use cases I throw at it and gives me generous usage.

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

#285
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure most of the current problems we see re drug use are a direct result of the nanny state trying to tell people how to live their lives. Forcing your views on people doesn’t work and has lots of negative consequences.

Okay, I'm intrigued. How in the fuck could the "nanny state" cause people to abuse heroin? Is there a reason other than "just cause it's my ideology"?

I don't know if this is what the parent commenter was getting at, but the existence of multi-billion-dollar drug cartels in Mexico is an empirical failure of US policy. Prohibition didn't work a century ago and it doesn't work now.

All the War on Drugs has accomplished is granting an extremely lucrative oligopoly to violent criminals. If someone is going to do heroin, ideally they'd get it from a corporation that follows strict pharmaceutical regulations and invests its revenue into R&D, not one that cuts it with even worse poison and invests its revenue into mass atrocities.

Who is it all even for? We're subsidizing criminal empires via US markets and hurting the people we supposedly want to protect. Instead of kicking people while they're down and treating them like criminals over poor health choices, we could have invested all those countless billions of dollars into actually trying to help them.

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

#287
post #167

Seems like people here are pretty negative towards a "conversational" AI chatbot. Chatgpt has a lot of frustrations and ethical concerns, and I hate the sycophancy as much as everyone else, but I don't consider being conversational to be a bad thing. It's just preference I guess. I understand how someone who mostly uses it as a google replacement or programming tool would prefer something terse and efficient. I fall…

> I've dreamed about a computer assistant that can respond to natural language When we dreamed about this as kids, we were dreaming about Data from Star Trek, not some chatbot that's been focus grouped and optimized for engagement within an inch of its life. LLMs are useful for many things and I'm a user myself, even staying within OpenAI's offerings, Codex is excellent, but as things stand anthropomorphizing models…

I would of though the hacker news type would be dreaming about having something like javis from iron man, not Data.

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

#288

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…

is it that bad? I have a robot vacuum, i put googley eyes on it gave it a name, and now everyone in the house uses the name an uses he/him to refer to it.

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

#289

All the examples of "warmer" generations show that OpenAI's definition of warmer is synonymous with sycophantic , which is a surprise given all the criticism against that particular aspect of ChatGPT. I suspect this approach is a direct response to the backlash against removing 4o.

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.

Google's search now has the annoying feature that a lot of searches which used to work fine now give a patronizing reply like "Unfortunately 'Haiti revolution persons' isn't a thing", or an explanation that "This is probably shorthand for [something completely wrong]"

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

#290
post #268

>GPT‑5.1 Thinking’s responses are also clearer, with less jargon and fewer undefined terms Oh yeah that's what I want when asking a technical question! Please talk down to me, call a spade an earth-pokey-stick and don't ever use a phrase or concept I don't know because when I come face-to-face with something I don't know yet I feel deep insecurity and dread instead of seeing an opportunity to learn! But I assume thei…

In defense of OpenAI in this particular situation, GPT 5 can be incredibly jargon-y at times, making it much worse of a learning tool than other LLMs. Here's some response snippets from me asking a question about dual-stack networking: > Get an IPv6 allocation from your RIR and IPv6 transit/peering. Run IPv6 BGP with upstreams and in your core (OSPFv3/IS-IS + iBGP). > Enable IPv6 on your access/BNG/BRAS/CMTS and aggr…

Asking it to clarify costs nothing and you end up getting up to speed with the language of the domain; everyone wins.
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