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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

#121

Post by agiipullor »

imiric wrote: post #115
bambax wrote: post #102

> quite a lot of perfectly good human mathematics consists in putting together existing knowledge and proof techniques Creativity is connecting ideas from different domains and see if something from one field applies to another. I do think AI is overhyped generally; but a major benefit from AI could be that after ingesting all the existing human knowledge (something no single human can ever hope to achieve) it would…

> Creativity is connecting ideas from different domains and see if something from one field applies to another. That's true. The question is whether the produced pattern has any value. LLMs are incapable of determining this, and will still often hallucinate, and make random baseless claims that can convince anyone except human domain experts. And that's still a difficult challenge: a domain expert is still needed to…

> And can we please stop calling pattern matching and generation "intelligence"

thats literally what an IQ test tests - abstract pattern matching. but I guess you dont like IQ tests either

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#122

Post by illiac786 »

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…

Using the word “Mentoring” is anthropomorphic and subconsciously makes you think it will learn. It does not, and it is for the human brain a formidable task to remember that something as smart as an LLM does not learn. I keep catching myself making the same mistake.

It’s also because it is so annoying to have to manage the memory of the LLM with custom prompts/instructions manually.

I have not yet played with the long term memory feature, but I fear it will be even less reliable than prompts, simply because in one year or two years so much will have changed again that this “memory” will have to be redone multiple times by then.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#123

Post by ionwake »

MinimalAction wrote: post #12

As a graduate student, this piece made me sad. I always believed that my work speaks for itself and transcends beyond my limited time on this cosmic experience. This notion of immortality was just a small intangible bonus I hoped for when I jumped into grad school. AI is making me feel less worthy.

I feel bravery transcends time better than the odd scientific breakthrough which are often attributed to one, but whose roots came from a "lesser" unknown

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#125

Post by timschmidt »

illiac786 wrote: post #122
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…

Using the word “Mentoring” is anthropomorphic and subconsciously makes you think it will learn. It does not, and it is for the human brain a formidable task to remember that something as smart as an LLM does not learn. I keep catching myself making the same mistake. It’s also because it is so annoying to have to manage the memory of the LLM with custom prompts/instructions manually. I have not yet played with the lon…

They can form new associations between concepts via their input prompts and thinking text. That is a form of learning. Just not very durable. I liken it to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#126

Post by illiac786 »

timschmidt wrote: post #125
illiac786 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the word “Mentoring” is anthropomorphic and subconsciously makes you think it will learn. It does not, and it is for the human brain a formidable task to remember that something as smart as an LLM does not learn. I keep catching myself making the same mistake. It’s also because it is so annoying to have to manage the memory of the LLM with custom prompts/instructions manually. I have not yet played with the lon…

They can form new associations between concepts via their input prompts and thinking text. That is a form of learning. Just not very durable. I liken it to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia

yeah, I should have been more specific: I meant the type of learning that mentoring fosters, the long term learning.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#127

Post by krab »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #114
Scea91 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a problem of the individual institutions and countries. The budget required for AI tools currently is negligible compared to other university expenses. We don't need to call everything a systemic disadvantage when the disadvantaged (at the institution level) have agency here.

Can you tell me what is the budget necessary to supply AI tools capable of substantial research assistance to all academic staff at a university? You seem to have a good estimate in your head; I definitely do not. From personal experience, ChatGPT 5.5 (the Plus tier) is excellent for programming tasks and also for various teaching related tasks but I have not observed the research benefits that Tim Gowers has when I…

> Can you tell me what is the budget necessary to supply AI tools capable of substantial research assistance to all academic staff at a university?

I think the GP meant that *if the tools provide substantial benefit* to staff, their costs can be compared to salaries and other large expenses of the university. The $100/month subscription costs less than your office space.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#128

Post by timschmidt »

illiac786 wrote: post #126
timschmidt wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can form new associations between concepts via their input prompts and thinking text. That is a form of learning. Just not very durable. I liken it to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia

yeah, I should have been more specific: I meant the type of learning that mentoring fosters, the long term learning.

I hear you. I think we are already seeing some middle ground with agentic systems using RAG, skills.md files, etc. It's a sort of disassociated card catalog memory. An engineer's notebook. Not the integrated, correlated, pre-processed set of relationships in the model. How to go backward from the notebook -> model cheaply without tanking performance is definitely one of those billion dollar questions.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#129

Post by leptons »

cyanydeez wrote: post #71
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've been watching the automation of things like flight control systems for the past decade, and the evolution of the fallback to a real pilot in the event of a emergency is what's most concerning about where LLMs are being embedded. Right now, we have a lot of smart people who have trained for decades to understand where these things go wrong and how to nudge them back, but the pool of people are going to slowly be…

We're on the road to Idiocracy.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#130

Post by snayan »

teiferer wrote: post #90
vthallam wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@NotOscarWilde drop your email here, I will reach out and happy to get you a pro account for a few months so you can try 5.5 pro.(work at OAI)

While this sounds generous (and in some ways it is), it does not address the general point that GP is making. That is, the systematic disadvantage which large parts of humanity have w.r.t. to access to the tools. You could say they can't drive a Lambhorgini either, but that also doesn't solve the problem.

I mean, I don't think OpenAI should be wading into the policies and practices of foreign institutions and governments. Look at all the blowback we see from the collision of Anthropic or OpenAI and the US government.

At present, the tools are available for whomever wants to buy them. Not OpenAI's fault that parent comment's government and/or institutions policies haven't been updated to allow for their purchase and use.

I'd argue that the OpenAI dude/dudettes level of generosity is appropriate given the circumstances.

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