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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

#481

Post by utopiah »

anuramat wrote: post #396
utopiah wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... that's the whole point, it can not make sense. It's stringing up words based on it's dataset. There is 0 sense making, 0 interpretation, 0 understanding. Words. Strung together, including then it says "no nonsense" because somewhere in its datasets often enough that's the series of words that best match the "stop saying BS!" kind of prompt.

do you ever get tired of pointing out that a large language model is a language model? UPD I do that as well when explaining to my relatives why I don't care what ChatGPT thinks about $X, but also they're not on HN

Worry not, pointing out improper use of language that benefits the biggest corporations on Earth that are destroying the planet is kind of hobby of mine.

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

#482

Post by marginalx »

ripped_britches wrote: post #477

Wow HN so negative. I know yall are using ChatGPT or other chat app every day and would benefit from improvements in steerability, no matter your preferences. I swear, one comment said something like “I guess normies like to talk to it - I just communicate directly in machine code with it.” Give me a break guys

Is this the chatgpt speaking?

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

#484

Post by pebble »

adriand wrote: post #474
elif wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another one I like to use is "never apologize or explain yourself. You are not a person you are an algorithm. No one wants to understand the reasons why your algorithm sucks. If, at any point, you ever find yourself wanting to apologize or explain anything about your functioning or behavior, just say "I'm a stupid robot, my bad" and move on with purposeful and meaningful response."

I think this is unethical. Humans have consistently underestimated the subjective experience of other beings. You may have good reasons for believing these systems are currently incapable of anything approaching consciousness, but how will you know if or when the threshold has been crossed? Are you confident you will have ceased using an abusive tone by then? I don’t know if flies can experience pain. However, I’m no…

Do you apologize to table corners when you bump into them?

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

#485

Post by downsplat »

elif wrote: post #466
engeljohnb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a global prompt that specifically tells it not to be sycophantic and to call me out when I'm wrong. It doesn't work for me. I've been using it for a couple months, and it's corrected me only once, and it still starts every response with "That's a very good question." I also included "never end a response with a question," and it just completely ingored that so it can do its "would you like me to..."

In my experience GPT used to be good at this stuff but lately it's progressively more difficult to get a "memory updated" persistence. Gemini is great at these prompt controls. On the "never ask me a question" part, it took a good 1-1.5 hrs of arguing and memory updating to convince gpt to actually listen.

You can entirely turn off memory, I did that the moment they added it. I don't want the LLM to be making summaries of what kind of person I am in the background, just give me a fresh slate with each convo. If I want to give it global instructions I can just set a system prompt.

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

#486

Post by anuramat »

utopiah wrote: post #481
anuramat wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you ever get tired of pointing out that a large language model is a language model? UPD I do that as well when explaining to my relatives why I don't care what ChatGPT thinks about $X, but also they're not on HN

Worry not, pointing out improper use of language that benefits the biggest corporations on Earth that are destroying the planet is kind of hobby of mine.

stylistic preferences are pretty much the ONLY thing you could discuss (in the context of LLMs) that actually has anything to do with (natural) language in the first place; how is having preferences an "improper use of langauge"?

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

#487

Post by oblio »

pbalau wrote: post #427

> what romanian football player won the premier league > The only Romanian football player to have won the English Premier League (as of 2025) is Florin Andone, but wait — actually, that’s incorrect; he never won the league. > ... > No Romanian footballer has ever won the Premier League (as of 2025). Yes, this is what we needed, more "conversational" ChatGPT... Let alone the fact the answer is wrong.

We need to turn this into the new "pelican on bike" LLM test.

Let's call it "Florin Andone on Premier League" :-)))

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

#488

Post by utopiah »

anuramat wrote: post #486
utopiah wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worry not, pointing out improper use of language that benefits the biggest corporations on Earth that are destroying the planet is kind of hobby of mine.

stylistic preferences are pretty much the ONLY thing you could discuss (in the context of LLMs) that actually has anything to do with (natural) language in the first place; how is having preferences an "improper use of langauge"?

I'm not sure I follow. My point is that pretty much everybody who doesn't have a degree in CS or IT assumes due to BigAI corporations that LLMs or GenAI tools think. This is reflected by the words they use. Such people do not say "the model parse my query and process it via it neural network based architecture to give a statistically plausible answer given the context" but rather they say "I had a chat with Claude and he said something useful" thus implying agency and a lot more.

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

#489

Post by thoroughburro »

pebble wrote: post #484
adriand wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is unethical. Humans have consistently underestimated the subjective experience of other beings. You may have good reasons for believing these systems are currently incapable of anything approaching consciousness, but how will you know if or when the threshold has been crossed? Are you confident you will have ceased using an abusive tone by then? I don’t know if flies can experience pain. However, I’m no…

Do you apologize to table corners when you bump into them?

Do you think it’s risible to avoid pulling the wings off flies?

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

#490

Post by Traubenfuchs »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #444
pbalau wrote: post #427

> what romanian football player won the premier league > The only Romanian football player to have won the English Premier League (as of 2025) is Florin Andone, but wait — actually, that’s incorrect; he never won the league. > ... > No Romanian footballer has ever won the Premier League (as of 2025). Yes, this is what we needed, more "conversational" ChatGPT... Let alone the fact the answer is wrong.

Which model did you use? With 5.1 Thinking, I get: "Costel Pantilimon is the Romanian footballer who won the English Premier League. "He did it twice with Manchester City, in the 2011–12 and 2013–14 seasons, earning a winner’s medal as a backup goalkeeper. ([Wikipedia][1]) URLs: * [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costel_Pantilimon ] * [ https://www.transfermarkt.com/costel-pantilimon/erfolge/spie... ] * [ https://thef…

The beauty of nondeterminism. I get:

The Romanian football player who won the Premier League is Gheorghe Hagi. He played for Galatasaray in Turkey but had a brief spell in the Premier League with Wimbledon in the 1990s, although he didn't win the Premier League with them.

However, Marius Lăcătuș won the Premier League with Arsenal in the late 1990s, being a key member of their squad.

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