Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

openai.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 766 posts

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

#361

Post by csomar »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #129
nlh wrote: 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.

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

How many of these people are paying and how much are they paying, though. Most "regular" people I met that have switched to ChaptGPT are using it as an alternative to search engines and are not paying for it (only one person I know is paying and he is using the Sora model to generate images for his business).

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

#362

Post by Lapel2742 »

LaFolle wrote: post #329
gandalfthepink wrote: post #301

It is truly stupid that they are trying to make it more human-like. They should have added a radio button to turn off these sort of customizations because it doesn't help some of us. Just pisses me off. It is supposed to be an answering machine, not some emotional support system.

> We heard clearly from users that great AI should not only be smart, but also enjoyable to talk to. That is what most people asked for. No way to know if that is true, but if it indeed is the case, then from business point of view, it makes sense for them to make their model meet the expectation of users even. Its extremely hard to make all people happy. Personally, i don't like it and would rather prefer more robot…

> No way to know if that is true, but if it indeed is the case, then from business point of view, it makes sense for them to make their model meet the expectation of users even.

It makes sense if your target is the general public talking to an AI girlfriend.

I don't know if that will fill their pockets enough to become profitable given the spending they announced but isn't this like they are admitting that all the AGI, we cure cancer, ... stuff was just bullshitting? And if it was bullshitting aren't they overvalued? Sex sells but will it sell enough?

> i don't like it and would rather prefer more robotic response by default rather than me setting its tone explicitly.

Me neither. I want high information density.

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

#363

Post by raincole »

csomar wrote: post #361
Workaccount2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> ChatGPT is overwhelmingly, unambiguously, a "regular people" product. How many of these people are paying and how much are they paying, though. Most "regular" people I met that have switched to ChaptGPT are using it as an alternative to search engines and are not paying for it (only one person I know is paying and he is using the Sora model to generate images for his business).

It's just another sign telling you that OpenAI's end game is selling ads.

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

#364

Post by dboon »

emsixteen wrote: post #342
gandalfthepink wrote: post #301

It is truly stupid that they are trying to make it more human-like. They should have added a radio button to turn off these sort of customizations because it doesn't help some of us. Just pisses me off. It is supposed to be an answering machine, not some emotional support system.

I'm on the hunt for ways (system instructions/first message prompts/settings/whatever) to do away with all of the fluffy nonsense in how LLMs 'speak' to you, and instead just make them be concise and matter-of-fact. fwiw as a regular user I typically interact with LLMs through either: - aistudio site (adjusting temperature, top-P, system instructions) - Gemini site/app - Copilot (workplace) Any and all advice welcome…

CLI tools are better about this IME. I use one called opencode which is very transparent about their prompts. They vendor the Anthropic prompts from CC; you can just snag them and tweak to your liking.

Unfortunately the “user instructions” a lot of online chat interfaces provide is often deemphasized in the system prompt

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

#365

Post by grey-area »

Lapel2742 wrote: post #362
LaFolle wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We heard clearly from users that great AI should not only be smart, but also enjoyable to talk to. That is what most people asked for. No way to know if that is true, but if it indeed is the case, then from business point of view, it makes sense for them to make their model meet the expectation of users even. Its extremely hard to make all people happy. Personally, i don't like it and would rather prefer more robot…

> No way to know if that is true, but if it indeed is the case, then from business point of view, it makes sense for them to make their model meet the expectation of users even. It makes sense if your target is the general public talking to an AI girlfriend. I don't know if that will fill their pockets enough to become profitable given the spending they announced but isn't this like they are admitting that all the AG…

If you want high information density don’t use a non-deterministic word generator.

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

#366

Post by guelo »

gandalfthepink wrote: post #301

It is truly stupid that they are trying to make it more human-like. They should have added a radio button to turn off these sort of customizations because it doesn't help some of us. Just pisses me off. It is supposed to be an answering machine, not some emotional support system.

We don't know what it's supposed to be, we're all figuring that out.

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

#367

Post by jacquesm »

typewithrhythm wrote: post #346
LaFolle wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We heard clearly from users that great AI should not only be smart, but also enjoyable to talk to. That is what most people asked for. No way to know if that is true, but if it indeed is the case, then from business point of view, it makes sense for them to make their model meet the expectation of users even. Its extremely hard to make all people happy. Personally, i don't like it and would rather prefer more robot…

Ai interfaces are going the same way the public internet has; initially it's audience was a subset of educated westerners, now it's the general public. "Most people" have trash taste.

I don't mind other people having trash taste. The problem is when I then have to consume their trash taste because they are in the majority.

Every medium ever gets degraded over time to the point that you might as well do without it.

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

#368

Post by Lapel2742 »

grey-area wrote: post #365
Lapel2742 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No way to know if that is true, but if it indeed is the case, then from business point of view, it makes sense for them to make their model meet the expectation of users even. It makes sense if your target is the general public talking to an AI girlfriend. I don't know if that will fill their pockets enough to become profitable given the spending they announced but isn't this like they are admitting that all the AG…

If you want high information density don’t use a non-deterministic word generator.

In my case it's very useful for learning purposes or for quick questions when I'm unsure where to even start looking for information.

LLMs are useful. I just do not believe that they are that useful that it is worth the money put into it.

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

#370

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

boredhedgehog wrote: post #358
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Thi…

Disincentivizing something undesirable will not necessarily lead to better results, because it wrongly assumes that you can foresee all consequences of an action or inaction. Someone who now falls in love with an LLM might instead fall for some seductress who hurts him more. Someone who now receives bad mental health assistance might receive none whatsoever.

I disagree with your premise entirely and, frankly, I think it's ridiculous. I don't think you need to foresee all possible consequences to take action against what is likely, especially when you have evidence of active harm ready at hand. I also think you're failing to take into account the nature of LLMs as agents of harm: so far it has been very difficult for people to legally hold LLMs accountable for anything, even when those LLMs have encouraged suicidal ideation or physical harm of others, among other obviously bad things.

I believe there is a moral burden on the companies training these models to not deliberately train them to be sycophantic and to speak in an authoritative voice, and I think it would be reasonable to attempt to establish some regulations in that regard in an effort to protect those most prone to predation of this style. And I think we need to clarify the manner in which people can hold LLM-operating companies responsible for things their LLMs say — and, preferably, we should err on the side of more accountability rather than less.

---

Also, I think in the case of "Someone who now receives bad mental health assistance might receive none whatsoever", any psychiatrist (any doctor, really) will point out that this is an incredibly flawed argument. It is often the case that bad mental health assistance is, in fact, worse than none. It's that whole "first, do no harm" thing, you know?

Post reply on HN