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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

#221

Post by samuelec »

Applejinx wrote: post #212
noisy_boy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mostly I just nudge it along. "Did you think about X? What about Y? Let's test Z" Exactly - you need to constantly have your sceptics glasses on and you need to be exacting in terms of the structure you want things to follow. Having and enforcing "taste" is important and you need to be willing to spend time on that phase because the quality of the payoff entirely depends on it. I recently planned for a major refact…

So you have to know the answer and also be an expert in the problem domain?

In my experience you need exactly what you said, and I would add that he probably would have spent half day to do the refactoring himself and it would be sure he did right.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#222

Post by aspenmartin »

lmpdev wrote: post #35
kerabatsos wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But perhaps we should regard it as a major achievement.

I mean in the same way getting Wolfram Alpha to solve a really hard/ugly differential equation I suppose

Insane that we have a system capable of making innovative math proofs and people dismiss it as unimpressive

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#224

Post by gdhkgdhkvff »

FrojoS wrote: post #141
nopinsight wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you're using the "regular" Pro version of Gemini 3.1 for the above, rather than the Deep Think mode, which is more comparable to GPT-5.5 Pro. To my knowledge, regular 3.1 Pro is a tier below and often makes mistakes. Moreover, there's no reason to believe the progress of LLMs, which couldn't reliably solve high-school math problems just 3–4 years ago, will stop anytime soon. You might want to track the progr…

> there's no reason to believe the progress of LLMs [...] will stop anytime soon Wrong. Every advancement has followed a s curve. Where we are on that curve is anyones guess. Or maybe "this time its different".

Great. You see a shape in graphs. And that shape tells you that _at some unknown point in the future_ progress will slow (but likely not stop).

Now back to the point, what reason do you have to believe progress will stop soon? If you have no reason, then it sounds like you agree with OP.

Which makes the patronizing sarcasm all that much more nauseating.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#225

Post by doginasuit »

tempaccount5050 wrote: post #159
bambax wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by solving hard problems you get an insight into the problem-solving process itself, at least in your area of expertise, in a way that you simply don’t if all you do is read other people’s solutions. One consequence of this is that people who have themselves solved difficult problems are likely to be significantly better at using solving problems with the help of AI, just as very good coders are better at vibe codi…

Are you a cutting edge research scientist or something? Everyone I know works in the same domain every day. The problems are the same. People aren't solving brand new problems to humanity every day. We make budgets and look at ticket counts. Roll out patches. Replace hardware. Upgrade software packages. Make a new dashboard to track a project. I guess if every day is a completely novel thing for you, ok. I feel like…

I don't think it matters much what kind of problem it is. If it is challenging enough to benefit from assistance and you end up playing a minor role in the solution, it seems like you are putting yourself in the worst position possible. You lose your edge for functioning within the problem space and it raises the question why you are even in the loop at all. If its job security you want, transforming your role into LLM babysitter seems like the worst way to ensure it.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#226

Post by nicoburns »

squidbeak wrote: post #190
Lionga wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which still makes no sense. There is the same chance we are flatlining now as that we are flatlining in e.g. 3 years or 5 years.

In what sense are the models flatlining?

In the sense that the incremental improvements in capabilities that we've been seeing in recent models seem to taking exponentially growing amounts of compute to achieve.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#228

Post by 542458 »

gobdovan wrote: post #216
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 would. Even if someone found a prompt or even automated the conversation and just searched all open math problems I still would. If they produced a useful result without harm to anyone, that's a valuable human activity that should be rewarded just as well as we reward the other mathematicians, which I imagine is quite a lot, given all the billionaire mathematicians...

> given all the billionaire mathematicians

We just call those ones “quant traders”.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#229

Post by nicoburns »

StrauXX wrote: post #148
civvv wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many indications that model progress is slowing down, so that is not entirely accurate.

Which indications are that?

The cost factors on the new models compared to the old models.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#230

Post by mirmor23 »

vessenes wrote: post #211
FrojoS wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's no reason to believe the progress of LLMs [...] will stop anytime soon Wrong. Every advancement has followed a s curve. Where we are on that curve is anyones guess. Or maybe "this time its different".

There are advancements that do not follow s curves - consider for instance total data transmitted over all networks, or financial derivatives volumes. I think a better question for AI is “is it more like a network effect, liquidity effect, or a biological/physical effect”?

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