A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro • Hacker News Board

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#311

Post by nozzlegear » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

stingraycharles wrote: post #198

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…

> Using the word “Mentoring” is anthropomorphic and subconsciously makes you think it will learn. I think this is a bit pedantic. Obviously the parent you’re replying to is referring to the concept of “in-context learning”, which is the actual industry / academic term for this. So you feed it a paper, and then it can use that info, and it needs steering / “mentoring” to be guided into the right direction. Heck the wh…

Anthropomorphism is a subtle marketing tool used by these big AI companies, who are financially incentivized to push the myth of AGI and want everyone to believe they're right on the cusp of achieving it. It's good to be pedantic in this case, we shouldn't anthropomorphize these tools.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#312

Post by aspenmartin » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #229

StrauXX wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which indications are that?

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

Cost for a specific level of performance decreases 10x per year, this has been a pretty consistent property for awhile now.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#313

Post by gertop » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #272

nicoburns wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Qwen3.6 9B is as good as GPT-4o and runs on my M2 MacBook Air. Models are getting stronger and less costly at the same time, but these are somewhat separate branches of research. Frontier labs are spending more because they are still getting marginal returns and there is more capacity to spend than there was a year ago.

Qwen 3.6 9B doesn't exist.

If you meant 3.5 9B and you truly believe it's as good as 4o then I can only assume you have a very basic use case.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#314

Post by margalabargala » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

whatever120 wrote: post #18

margalabargala wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undergraduate? No. We've had calculators able to solve undergraduate problems for decades. AI doesn't change the need to understand how calculus works any more than calculators did. The foundations remain valuable. Graduate? Yes.

How should graduate school be changed then? Specifically for mathematics

Hell if I know. It's easy to see problems. Solutions are way harder. I'm not a math professor.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#315

Post by AlexandrB » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

camdenreslink wrote: post #264

vessenes wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”?

Total volume of usage is not an advancement, it’s orthogonal.

Indeed, and it's more linked with market penetration than technological advancement. It's like evaluating airplane technology by "total miles flown".

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#316

Post by _heimdall » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

nl wrote: post #238

nicoburns wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But they don't? Mythos is a 10T model. Opus is a 5T model. That's not an exponentially growing amount of compute but it is achieving exponential improvements (eg from Mozilla: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/ai-security-zer... )

Wasn't 4.6 Sonnet a 1T model?

Parameters and compute are quite the same thing, but going from 1T to 5T to 10T is quite a ramp up.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#317

Post by stingraycharles » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

nozzlegear wrote: post #311

stingraycharles wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using the word “Mentoring” is anthropomorphic and subconsciously makes you think it will learn. I think this is a bit pedantic. Obviously the parent you’re replying to is referring to the concept of “in-context learning”, which is the actual industry / academic term for this. So you feed it a paper, and then it can use that info, and it needs steering / “mentoring” to be guided into the right direction. Heck the wh…

Anthropomorphism is a subtle marketing tool used by these big AI companies, who are financially incentivized to push the myth of AGI and want everyone to believe they're right on the cusp of achieving it. It's good to be pedantic in this case, we shouldn't anthropomorphize these tools.

This is just a “hurr durr AI companies evil” argument without substance.

It’s the people that are the problem, nobody told the grandparent to use “mentoring” as a word, and my argument is that it’s a complete overreaction to classify them as anthropomorphizing AIs, and I’d argue default to that argument would be an insult to them, and it’s super pedantic.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#318

Post by odyssey7 » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

TrackerFF wrote: post #295

The vast, vast majority of students going into higher education this fall will not contribute much to science until 4-5 years down the road (should they do research). Realistically 6-7 when they're in full swing with their Ph.D. If we look where these models were 5-7 years ago...the existential threat of the Ph.D. was not even on the radar back then. The people finishing up their doctorate now are the first that can…

It’s not as if institutions have been lavishing PhD students with money up until now.

As an afterthought budget item, those funds aren’t exactly attractive targets to raid for pursuing an expensive, different process.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#319

Post by 34qJhah » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #132

teiferer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're absolutely right (pun intended). An aside: It was a very nice gesture and completely unexpected by me, so even if it doesn't work out, it made my day. I personally believe that kind gestures have a lot of power. Back on topic: There is a real danger of the gap between rich and poor universities significantly widening in all fields if the rich can afford Pro level models, or even hardware that can run their own…

It isn't a nice gesture---it is guerilla marketing! (pun also intended but I mean it)

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#320

Post by stingraycharles » Sat, May 09, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #200

stingraycharles wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using the word “Mentoring” is anthropomorphic and subconsciously makes you think it will learn. I think this is a bit pedantic. Obviously the parent you’re replying to is referring to the concept of “in-context learning”, which is the actual industry / academic term for this. So you feed it a paper, and then it can use that info, and it needs steering / “mentoring” to be guided into the right direction. Heck the wh…

I agree it’s pedantic and personally don’t get bent out of shape with people anthropomorphizing the llms. But I do think you get better results if keep the text prediction machine mental model in your head as you work with them. And that can be very hard to do given the ui we most interact with them in is a chat session.

Absolutely, but there is no evidence that the grandparent was doing that, all they did was use the word “mentoring” and my argument is not that anthropomorphizing isn’t a problem - it is - but that the response to this particular HN is super pedantic.

Obviously the real people that are classifying AI as human intelligence aren’t going to be the top comment on reviewing LLM’s PhD-level papers. They are on very different, much more problematic areas of the internet.