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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

#351

Post by robot-wrangler »

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…

> Now, if these to-be researcher students feel defeated (enough to quit), or completely lean on AI models the work for them, we're going to have a problem. [..] If we look at it a bit cynically: Some researcher will be able to pump out a lot more papers by spending money on compute, than a couple of years of training students.

Obviously this is already happening and will accelerate. Outside of grad work, you could already just buy a degree. Certainly in the softer disciplines, you can currently just buy a phd thesis and a good publication history. If you're in industry instead of academics, you can even buy a promotion. If your employer gives an AI budget to all workers then you quietly double that budget out of your own pocket for as long as it takes to get a promotion, then stop and just enjoy a bigger paycheck.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#352

Post by tmp10423288442 »

It's interesting that ChatGPT Pro is the real deal that can write novel physics or math papers (for certain values of novel), while Claude Pro is crap that, depending on the A/B test, may not even provide Claude Code or at the very least doesn't provide Opus. Shows how LLM naming conventions are currently a mess.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#353

Post by sigmarule »

nostrebored wrote: post #341
gdhkgdhkvff wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmm, I don’t know, maybe the fact that 4.6, 4.7, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 3.0, 3.1 are all marginal improvements?

Equally marginal?

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#354

Post by oblio »

daishi55 wrote: post #338
eiieue wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the world hasn’t changed all that much except people getting laid off in response to over-hiring prior to the diffusion of llm’s.

> over-hiring For how long should you be allowed to use this excuse? It’s nearly 5 years since the peak of COVID hiring. What’s an acceptable limit - 10 years? Of course at that point you can just switch over to outsourcing and “stupid MBAs”, the other two of Reddit’s favorite scapegoats. I find a lot of the AI skepticism to be totally unfalsifiable.

And the same can be said for AI exuberance.

Yes, LLMs are a great technology. Yes, we will probably all use them all the time in 20 years. No, we don't know how we will use them (to generate cat memes or to cure cancer) in 20 years time.

Especially for software developers it looks increasingly that after huge turmoil it's likely we will need +/- the same number of developers in the world.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#355

Post by antisthenes »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #195
quantummagic wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gemini’s smug... Anthropomorphizing these systems is dangerous, whether coming from the bullish or bearish perspective. The output is statistically generated by a machine lacking the capability to be smug.

It's only "statistically generated" in the same way that your brain is just "neurons firing." That's the low-level description of what's happening, but on a higher level, it's correct to say that it's being smug.

> it's correct to say that it's being smug.

It's not correct to say that it's being smug, because when people are being smug, we do it for a purpose - e.g. to signal higher social status or superior knowledge.

A machine has no such imperative, so what you call 'being smug' is statistical mimicry.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#356

Post by robot-wrangler »

qwrahg wrote: post #350
robot-wrangler wrote: post #343

A very interesting comment from Baez, I'll just quote part of it. > Where does the value of thinking and having deep ideas come from? We need to think about this now. If it comes primarily from their scarcity – the fact that having certain ideas is hard – then indeed this value may drop precipitously when the manufacture of ideas can be automated. But if the value comes from the utility of the ideas – the benefit tha…

I note that it is always the same online pundits (even if they are distinguished academics) who push anything new. Meanwhile Wiles and Perelman stayed offline and solved real problems.

I don't necessarily think engaging in the personalities is interesting, but I'm struggling to see what is the beef here. Is it personalities? Pure vs applied math? Or AI?

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#357

Post by wtetzner »

daishi55 wrote: post #338
eiieue wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the world hasn’t changed all that much except people getting laid off in response to over-hiring prior to the diffusion of llm’s.

> over-hiring For how long should you be allowed to use this excuse? It’s nearly 5 years since the peak of COVID hiring. What’s an acceptable limit - 10 years? Of course at that point you can just switch over to outsourcing and “stupid MBAs”, the other two of Reddit’s favorite scapegoats. I find a lot of the AI skepticism to be totally unfalsifiable.

> I find a lot of the AI skepticism to be totally unfalsifiable.

A lot of the discourse around AI in general is unfalsifiable. It's just a bunch of people "predicting" the future. Seems smarter to just avoid making assumptions about it at this point.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#358

Post by oblio »

holoduke wrote: post #241
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".

Software and hardware have no limits. Theoretically would could bozons for computations and have the same amount of computation available on one cm3 of the current total computation in the entire world. Same with software. Never there was a stop on new algorithms. With LLMs there are so many parts that will get better and are not very far fetched.

> Software and hardware have no limits.

Yeah, if time is infinite, R&D imagination is infinite, energy is infinite and material resources are infinite. Easy.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#359

Post by bigyabai »

baq wrote: post #344
kybernetikos wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current LLM architecture doesn't learn - and you're right this is a huge piece that normal folks fail to understand, since in many ways, it's the opposite of what years of AI research has been trying to create. However, I think it's important to remember that LLMs are embedded in larger systems, and those larger systems do learn.

If I was a frontier lab and I solved continual learning, as of today I would absolutely not release it - the society isn't ready for this; society isn't even ready for widespread diffusion of current publicly available frontier models. If however I was a frontier lab who solved continual learning and my competitor also solved and released it, I would release mine immediately, obviously. The point is, continual learni…

You're not a frontier lab, the shareholders own those. And if shareholders get a private briefing about an unprecedented breakthrough in continual learning, they would announce it from the rooftops to take credit for the progress ASAP and reap the rewards for their stock value.

The only lab that I can exempt from this is DARPA.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#360

Post by programjames »

nostrebored wrote: post #341
gdhkgdhkvff wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmm, I don’t know, maybe the fact that 4.6, 4.7, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 3.0, 3.1 are all marginal improvements?

I think people's opinion of "marginal improvement" is based on their relative ability. A 2000 elo chess player is going to think the jump from 500 to 1000 is marginal. They're both floundering around not doing anything resembling common sense. A 1000 elo chess player is going to find the jump from 2000 to 2500 marginal. They're both playing far better moves for incomprehensible reasons, and the only reason you know the 2500 player is better is due to benchmarking. It is only when you are evaluating systems about at your level that you can feel the improvement.

I, personally, found the past two years to be a much larger improvement than the previous two years.

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