GPT‑5.3 Instant • Hacker News Board

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#141

Post by dotancohen » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:11 PM UTC

merlindru wrote: post #118

tedsanders wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, for a while ChatGPT Plus has been powered by two series of models under the hood. One series is the Instant series, which is faster and more tuned to ChatGPT, but less accurate. The second series is the Thinking series, which is more accurate and more tuned to professional knowledge work, but slower (because it uses more reasoning tokens). We'd also prefer to have simple experience with just one option, but pic…

but why not have "sane defaults but configurable"? hide away the extra complexity for everyone. give power users a way to get it back.

The model doesn't even need to be exposed in the UI. Let the user specify "use model foobar-4" or "use a coding model" or "use a middle-tier attorney model".

VIM does this well: no UI, magic incantations to use features.

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#142

Post by jstummbillig » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:16 PM UTC

jpgreenall wrote: post #67

jonas21 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basic physics, the sort of example you might find in a high school textbook.

Sure. But do we think the topic was chosen at random?

No, and it's also not a conspiracy.

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#143

Post by ddtaylor » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:21 PM UTC

I kind of chuckled when I read the headline "GPT‑5.3 Instant: Smoother, more ..."

LLM companies starting to sound like cigarette advertisements.

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#144

Post by embedding-shape » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:22 PM UTC

jpgreenall wrote: post #34

Is nobody else unsettled by the example? Strange timing to talk about calculating trajectories on long range projectiles?

I took it to be a homage to early computing and programming which was a lot about calculating trajectories fast enough.

But considering current circumstances, not sure how right my initial interpretation was.

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#145

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:22 PM UTC

pants2 wrote: post #136

vessenes wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, I imagine you know this, but the product split is not obvious, even to my 20-something kids that are Plus subscribers - I saw one of them chatting with the instant model recently and I was like "No!! Never do that!!" and they did not understand they were getting the (I'm sorry to say) much less capable model. I think it's confusing enough it's a brand harm. I offer no solutions, unfortunately. I guess you…

I agree -- we're on the ChatGPT Enterprise plan at work and every time someone complains about it screwing up a task it turns out they were using the instant model. There needs to be a way to disable it at the bare minimum.

[deleted]

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#146

Post by sothatsit » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

butILoveLife wrote: post #78

I unsubbed because ChatGPT was no longer SOTA. They def got cheap. Reminds me of that graph where late customers are abused. OpenAI is already abusing the late customers. Claude is pretty great.

ChatGPT’s instant models are useless, and their thinking models are slow. This makes Claude more pleasant to use, despite them not being SOTA.

But ChatGPT is still SOTA in search and hard problem solving.

GPT-5.2 Pro is the model people are using to solve Erdos problems after all, not Claude or Gemini. The Thinking models are noticeably better if you have difficult problems to work on, which justifies my sub even if I use Claude for everything else. Their Codex models are also much smarter, but also less pleasant to use.

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#147

Post by sumeno » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #82

jpgreenall wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But do we think the topic was chosen at random?

When primed, people will see things that aren't there.

and it's someone's job to think of that connection before publishing the release and they failed

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#148

Post by jonas21 » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

jpgreenall wrote: post #67

jonas21 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basic physics, the sort of example you might find in a high school textbook.

Sure. But do we think the topic was chosen at random?

No, it wasn't chosen at random -- it had to be a question that any reasonable person would immediately recognize as harmless, but where the old model would inject a bunch of safety caveats and the new model would not.

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#149

Post by harmoni-pet » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

ddtaylor wrote: post #143

I kind of chuckled when I read the headline "GPT‑5.3 Instant: Smoother, more ..." LLM companies starting to sound like cigarette advertisements.

GPT-5.3 Instant: It's toasted...

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#150

Post by hungryhobbit » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

ibejoeb wrote: post #133

jpgreenall wrote: post #36

Unsettling that the example talks about trajectories in long range projectiles given recent events..

Was there a recent archery incident?

OpenAI just took a major US military contract from Anthropic because Anthropic had morals and wouldn't let the US military use Claude to surveil or attack US citizens ...

... and OpenAI didn't. The military said (effectively) "we need to be able to use AI illegally against our own citizens", and OpenAI said "we'll help!"