Most comments here seem to discuss coding results. I know these are compared against industry benchmarks, but does anyone have experience using these with non CS related tasks? For example the other day I was brainstorming a kayak trip with both ChatGPT and Gemini 3.0. ChatGPT was off the rails. Trying to convince me the river flowed a different sirection than it does, and all sorts of weirdness. Gemini didn't provide information nearly as well as a human with experience, but it wasn't _useless_ information. The OpenAI model was a catasrophe at this. I'd be curious how the different models rate for the general audience, and if that plays into it at all.
OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race
421–430 of 960 posts
Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every so often I try out a GPT model for coding again, and manage to get tricked by the very sparse conversation style into thinking it's great for a couple of days (when it says nothing and then finishes producing code with a 'I did x, y and z' with no stupid 'you're absolutely' right sucking up and it works, it feels very good). But I always realize it's just smoke and mirrors - the actual quality of the code and t…
I find for difficult questions math and design questions GPT5 tends to produce better answers than Claude and Gemini.
Could you clarify what you mean by design questions? I do agree that GPT5 tends to have a better agentic dispatch style for math questions but I've found it has really struggled with data model design.
Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
NME at all - 5.1 codex has been the best by far.
How can you stand the excruciating slowness? Claude Code is running circles around codex. The most mundane tasks make it think for a minute before doing anything.
By learning to parallelize my work. This also solved my problem with slow Xcode builds.
Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd be a little bit more nuanced: I think there's something off with their plans right now: it's pretty clear at this point that they can't own the technological frontier, Google is just too close already and from a purely technological PoV they are much better suited to have the best tech in the medium term. (There's no moat and Google has way more data and compute available, and also tons of cash to burn without de…
> But ChatGPT is an insane brand I mean, so was netscape.
Maybe, I was too young to remember that.
Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race
#425I've seen a rumor going around that OpenAI hasn't had a successful pre-training run since mid 2024. This seemed insane to me but if you give ChatGPT 5.1 a query about current events and instruct it not to use the internet it will tell you its knowledge cutoff is June 2024. Not sure if maybe that's just the smaller model or what. But I don't think it's a good sign to get that from any frontier model today, that's 18 m…
I asked ChatGPT 5.1 to help me solve a silly installation issue with the codex command line tool (I’m not an npm user and the recommended installation method is some kludge using npm), and ChatGPT told me, with a straight face, that codex was discontinued and that I must have meant the “openai” command.
"with a straight face"
Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race
#426OpenAI is basically just Netscape at this point. An innovative product with no means of significant revenue generation. One one side it's up against large competitors with an already established user base and product line that can simply bundle their AI offerings into those products. Google will do just what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer and bundle Gemini in for 'Free' with their already other profitable produ…
Oh God I love the analogy of OpenAI being Netscape. As someone who was an adult in the 1990s, this is so apt. Companies at that time were trying to build a moat around the World Wide Web. They obviously failed. I've thought that OpenAI too would fail but I've never thought about it like Netscape and WWW.
OpenAI should be looking at how Google built a moat around search. Anyone can write a Web crawler. Lots of people have. But no one else has turned search into the money printing machine that Google has. And they've used that to fund their search advantage.
I've long thought the moat-buster here will be China because they simply won't want the US to own this future. It's a national security issue. I see things like DeepSeek is moat-busting activity and I expect that to intensify.
Currently China can't buy the latest NVidia chips or ASML lithography equipment. Why? Because the US said so. I don't expect China to tolerate this long term and of any country, China has desmonstrated the long-term commitment to this kind of project.
Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race
#427OpenAI is basically just Netscape at this point. An innovative product with no means of significant revenue generation. One one side it's up against large competitors with an already established user base and product line that can simply bundle their AI offerings into those products. Google will do just what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer and bundle Gemini in for 'Free' with their already other profitable produ…
I know it's been said before but it's slightly insane they're trying to compete on a hot new tech with a company with 1) a top notch reputation for AI and 2) the largest money printer that has ever existed on the planet.
Feel like the end result would always be that while Google is slow to adjust, once they're in the race they're in it it.
Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race
#428The real code red here is less that Google just one-upped OpenAI but that they demonstrated there’s no moat to be had here. Absent a major breakthrough all the major providers are just going to keep leapfrogging each other in the most expensive race to the bottom of all time. Good for tech, but a horrible business and financial picture for these companies.
Maybe there's no tangible moat still, but did Gemini 3's exceptional performance actually funnel users away from ChatGPT? The typical Hacker News reader might be aware of its good performance on benchmarks, but did this convert a significant number of ChatGPT users to Gemini? It's not obvious to me either way.
Definitely. The fact that they inject it into Google Search means that even fewer people who have never used ChatGPT or just used it as a "smarter" Google search will just directly try the search function. It is terrible for actually detailed information i.e. debugging errors, but for summarizing basic searches that would have taken 2-3 clicks on the results is handled directly after the search. I feel bad for the website hosts who actually want visitors instead of visibility.
Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race
#429I've seen a rumor going around that OpenAI hasn't had a successful pre-training run since mid 2024. This seemed insane to me but if you give ChatGPT 5.1 a query about current events and instruct it not to use the internet it will tell you its knowledge cutoff is June 2024. Not sure if maybe that's just the smaller model or what. But I don't think it's a good sign to get that from any frontier model today, that's 18 m…
Every so often I try out a GPT model for coding again, and manage to get tricked by the very sparse conversation style into thinking it's great for a couple of days (when it says nothing and then finishes producing code with a 'I did x, y and z' with no stupid 'you're absolutely' right sucking up and it works, it feels very good). But I always realize it's just smoke and mirrors - the actual quality of the code and t…
You're absolutely right!
Somehow it doesn't get on my nerves (unlike Gemini with "Of course").
Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Maybe "business like" for Americans. In most of the world we don't spend quite so much effort glazing one another in the workplace. "That's an incredibly insightful question and really gets to the heart of the matter". No it isn't. I was shocked they didn't fix this behavior in v3. I presume rejecting the glazing is exactly the behavior they're praising Google for. I can't recall it doing this with any of my prompt…
I'm a daily user of Gemini. I get this glazing every single time. This is my very last interaction with Gemini (edited for brevity), > I have a young cryptomeria japonica that is about 1 meter tall, growing in the ground. Is it too late to bonsai this plant? > That's an excellent question! [etc...] > I have been told cutting back to brown wood will prevent back budding > That is a great clarification and you are touc…
You know you can control that, right? I'm constantly blown away by the number of posts in threads like this from people who clearly aren't aware of custom instructions.
Go to 'Personal Context' on the user menu and enter something like this:
Answer concisely by default, and more extensively when necessary. Avoid rhetorical flourishes, bonhomie, and cliches. Take a forward-thinking view. Be mildly positive and encouraging, but never sycophantic or cloying. Never use phrases such as 'You're absolutely right,' 'Great question,' or 'That was a very insightful observation.' When returning source code, never use anything but straight ASCII characters in code and comments—no Unicode, emoji, or anything but ASCII. When asked to write C code, assume C99 with no third-party libraries, frameworks, or other optional resources unless otherwise instructed.
ChatGPT and Claude have similar features. Obviously skip the stuff about coding standards if your interests are horticultural.
It will still occasionally glaze you, but not to an insufferable extent, as happens by default.