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A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

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Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#61

Post by fakedang »

revolvingthrow wrote: post #55
goobatrooba wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All salary discussions need a cost of living context. Yes in Europe you earn a bit less but the public services are much better than in the US and one emergency (r.g. healthcare) won't ruin you as it's mostly a public system. I'll take a Euro salary and qualify life over a FIRE-typs salary and daily fear of falling into the abyss any day.

Given the topic and the fact llm providers charge global rates, the absolute take-home money is much more relevant. Even if you live like a king on $1000/mo, 5.5 pro is still $200.

Their loss if they don't move to regional pricing. AI will continue to remain an upper-management luxury then, and won't reach the mass adoption required to justify their outsized valuations.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#62

Post by ziotom78 »

I am a physics professor and often use Gemini to check my papers. It is a formidable tool: it was able to find a clerical error (a missing imaginary unit in a complex mathematical expression) I was not able to find for days, and it often underlines connections between concepts and ideas that I overlooked.

However, it often makes conceptual errors that I can spot only because I have good knowledge of the topic I am discussing. For instance, in 3D Clifford algebras it repeatedly confuses exponential of bivectors and of pseudoscalars.

Good to know that ChatGPT 5.5 Pro can produce a publishable paper, but from what I have seen so far with Gemini, it seems to me that it is better to consider LLMs as very efficient students who can read papers and books in no time but still need a lot of mentoring.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#63

Post by ziotom78 »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #11

As a TCS assistant professor from Eastern Europe, I always am a little jealous of the biggest names in math having such an easy access to the expensive, long thinking models. Paying for Pro from any of my current academic budgets is completely ouf of the field of reality here -- all budgets tend to have restricted uses and software payments fit into very few categories. Effectively, I'd have to ask for a brand new gr…

I fully understand your rant! I pay ~20€/month for the Pro account, as my university has a deal with Microsoft and only seems to recognize Copilot, so it’s very hard to use one own’s funding for paying something else.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#64

Post by fragmede »

alsetmusic wrote: post #56
thierrydamiba wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoutout to you-I will match it if they need other resources. (I don’t work at OAI, just think this is cool)

You know what, I'm ashamed that I didn't think of this. I'll sponsor three months. Email in my hn profile. I don't understand the math in the article, but I'd love to help you make progress in it.

same.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#66

Post by pmontra »

mxwsn wrote: post #27

> Here’s a thought experiment: suppose that a mathematician solved a major problem by having a long exchange with an LLM in which the mathematician played a useful guiding role but the LLM did all the technical work and had the main ideas. Would we regard that as a major achievement of the mathematician? I don’t think we would. This is a cultural choice. It makes sense that in the mathematics culture we currently hav…

I replied to a comment about AI in sports and I build on that.

We praise car drivers despite most of the performance in their sport comes from the car. The driver makes the difference when two cars are close in performance. Brilliances or mistakes. Horse riders too.

In the case of math, the human can lead the LLM on the right track, point it to a problem or to another one. So it deserves some praise.

Then the team that built the car, cared about the horse, built the AI might deserve even more praise but we tend to care more about the single most visible human.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#67

Post by fragmede »

pmontra wrote: post #60
bel8 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machines are comming even after table tennis :( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVEzgYxDdrc

Sports are safe. Machines came after runners (motogp, formula 1) and yet we cheer the winners of the 100 m at the Olympics Games. Fully autonomous bikes and cars won't change that. AIs destroy chess players. We still cheer the world champion. We care about sports with humans.

Robot MotoGP would be amazing to see just how far the limits could be pushed without risking the life of a human though. Or even full size remote control.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#68

Post by revolvingthrow »

fakedang wrote: post #61
revolvingthrow wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the topic and the fact llm providers charge global rates, the absolute take-home money is much more relevant. Even if you live like a king on $1000/mo, 5.5 pro is still $200.

Their loss if they don't move to regional pricing. AI will continue to remain an upper-management luxury then, and won't reach the mass adoption required to justify their outsized valuations.

Regional pricing makes sense for products that don’t have ongoing costs or where most of the input cost can be offset by local labor. You’re not buying server racks nor electricity at 1/3 of the price to serve poorer markets

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#69

Post by recursivecaveat »

ziotom78 wrote: post #62

I am a physics professor and often use Gemini to check my papers. It is a formidable tool: it was able to find a clerical error (a missing imaginary unit in a complex mathematical expression) I was not able to find for days, and it often underlines connections between concepts and ideas that I overlooked. However, it often makes conceptual errors that I can spot only because I have good knowledge of the topic I am di…

This is close to my experience with code. LLMs can pick out small mistakes from giant code changes with surprising accuracy, or slowly narrow down a weird. On the other hand I've seen them bravely shoulder on under completely incorrect conceptual models of what they're working with and churn around in circles consequently, spin up giant piles of slop to re-implement something they decided was necessary, but didn't bother to search for, or outright dismiss important error signals as just 'transient failures'. Unlimited stamina, low wisdom.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#70

Post by tags2k »

ziotom78 wrote: post #62

I am a physics professor and often use Gemini to check my papers. It is a formidable tool: it was able to find a clerical error (a missing imaginary unit in a complex mathematical expression) I was not able to find for days, and it often underlines connections between concepts and ideas that I overlooked. However, it often makes conceptual errors that I can spot only because I have good knowledge of the topic I am di…

I'm no physics professor but this aligns with the way I use the tools in my "senior engineer" space. I bring the fundamentals to sanity-check the trigger-happy agent and try to imbue other humans with those fundamentals so they can move towards doing the same. It feels like the only way this whole thing will work (besides eventually moving to local models that do less but companies can afford).
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