Those examples all seem like two variations of the same thing.
GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT
561–570 of 766 posts
Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
My worry is that they're training it on Q&A from the general public now, and that this tone, and more specifically, how obsequious it can be, is exactly what the general public want. Most of the time, I suspect, people are using it like wikipedia, but with a shortcut to cut through to the real question they want answered; and unfortunately they don't know if it is right or wrong, they just want to be told how bright…
LLMs only really make sense for tasks where verifying the solution (which you have to do!) is significantly easier than solving the problem: translation where you know the target and source languages, agentic coding with automated tests, some forms of drafting or copy editing, etc. General search is not one of those! Sure, the machine can give you its sources but it won't tell you about sources it ignored. And verify…
That's a major use case, especially if the definition is broad enough to include take my expertise, knowledge and perhaps a written document, and transmute it to others forms--slides, illustrations, flash cards, quizzes, podcasts, scripts for an inbound call center.
But there seem to be uses where a verified solution is irrelevant. Creativity generally--an image, poem, description of an NPC in a roleplaying game, the visuals for a music video never have to be "true", just evocative. I suppose persuasive rhetoric doesn't have to be true, just plausible or engaging.
As for general search, I don't know that we can say that "classic search" can be meaningful said to tell you about the sources it ignored. I will agree that using OpenAI or Perplexity for search is kind of meh, but Google's AI Mode does a reasonable job at informing you about the links it provides, and you can easily tab over to a classic search if you want. It's almost like having a depth of expertise doing search helps in building a search product the incorporates an LLM...
But, yeah, if one is really disinterested in looking at sources, just chatting with a typical LLM seems a rather dubious way to get an accurate or reasonable comprehensive answer.
Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT
#563All 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.
I would love an LLM that says, “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” once in a while.
Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT
#564I wish chatgpt would stop saying things like "here's a no nonsense answer" like maybe just don't include nonsense in the answer?
Maybe you used "Don't give me nonsense" in your custom system prompt?
That does nothing. You can add, “say I don’t know if you are not certain or don’t know the answer” and it will never say I don’t know.
Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT
#565Me: Is there a seahorse emoji?
5.1: Yes. It is ⬛ (the seahorse emoji).
Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really struggle to see a path where $.01 ad inventory covers the cost of inference, much less training or any other of OpenAI ventures. Unless every query makes you watch a 30 second unskippable video or something equally awful.
Users will ask ChatGPT for recommendations and the answer will feature products and services that have paid to be there, probably with some sort of attribution mechanism so OpenAI can get paid extra if the user ends up completing the purchase.
ChatGPT will become a salesman working on commission.
Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT
#567[dead]
Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fi…
Couldn't you learn way more without the fluff? Would you really ask an AI how's it's doing?
I'm probably neurodiverse, so ymmv, but I really couldn't care much less about how people are doing; it's a very small part of my idea of a good conversation. What I want is to bounce ideas off of each other, and so the answer is no: I can't get the same experience or learning from just reading a book or being in a lecture - I want that back-and-forth where I'm the one talking about 50% of the time.
Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT
#569I wish chatgpt would stop saying things like "here's a no nonsense answer" like maybe just don't include nonsense in the answer?
It might actually help output answer with less nonsense.
As an example in some workflow I ask chatgpt to figure out if the user is referring to a specific location and output a country in json like { country }
It has some error rate at this task. Asking it for a rationale improves this error rate to almost none. { rationale, country }. However reordering the keys like { country, rationale } does not. You get the wrong country and a rationale that justifies the correct one that was not given.
Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT
#570> 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.
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6915c8bd1c80819183a54cd144b55eb2 Damn this is a lot of self correcting
This sounds like my inner monologue during a test I didnt study for