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GPT‑5.3 Instant

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Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most frustrating part for me is that this is how I used to write. I was always doing, "Why X works, but Y doesn't" and stuff like that. I may have seemed trite or pompous (or both) in the past, but now it seems like I'm copying an LLM -- which actually feels worse. One thing I haven't seen ChatGPT do much of is use sound-effects, so swoosh here we go with my new writing style schwing !

And of course, the reason that ChatGPT sounds like that is that it's what a whole lot of explanatory expert blog posts did, and so when ChatGPT is told to talk like that, that's what it does.

It’s more a factor of how they structure the desired output. They follow a template instead of trying to come up with something on the fly

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#232
post #208

The single biggest issue for me with ChatGPT right now is how absolutely awful it sounds in every answer. "Why it matters", "the big picture", "it's not jut you", the awful emphasis, the quotations with rhetorical questions, etc.. I don't know if it's intentional so you can easily spot ChatGPT-generated content on the web? The very first GPT-5 version was good but they ruined it immediately afterwards with "making th…

I solved this by asking it to make a memory that all answers to me should be brisk, clinical, and to the point. This worked well, except for the annoying habit of beginning answers with something like "Terse: $answer", which required a second memory, solving the issue in full. I've been happy with it since. Edit: I just realized this interaction is its own demo – that's the entire response it gave me, as it should be…

Based on my experience, this is better put into the Settings -> Customizability dialogue, not Memories

Another user mentioned how it will reference the very instruction ("I know you would prefer concise answers, so here's a concise answer..") but that makes sense when you realize that Memories are more for things like "user lives in San Francisco and is new in town and is open to recommendations of third places to meet people" so if it's answering the question about the best coffee places in n SF, it would make sense for ChatGPT to finish with "Also, given that you are new to San Francisco, and your interest in both boardgames and meeting new people, have you considered visiting [place]? It's a local coffee shop that also rents out board games, with a Thursday evening theme where you are partnered with strangers. It might be a good way to make new people that enjoy similar things!"

If you consider adding Memories us adding something to the system prompt, it won't make very much sense a lot of the time, because you might forget what you wrote and then be surprised when your model suddenly suggests jigsaw puzzles when you mentioned that you're stressed building a compiler. Hence it tells the user the context of the memory that it's using and why, whereas if you added to Customizability I've never seen it leak out like that.

If you add to Memories "user is a software engineer and prefers Rust to C/C++" it may say something like "By the way, since you prefer Rust I would recommend [this development path]" but if you put it into Customizability as "do not suggest C/C++ for software projects unless it's the only way, use Rust or Go instead" it will likely start down the path of suggesting and researching Rust from the very beginning without explaining to you your own instructions.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that the Customizability instructions (mine say "be concise, do not be afraid to correct the user or use occasional dry humor. Speak frankly and tell the user if they may be making a mistake and suggest other courses of action" whereas Memories contain simple facts about me, i e. ("lives in [city], likes Drama and Action/Adventure movies, jazz/pink/rock and roll music, is an introvert, has family in the US, appreciates different points of view, insatiably curious about nearly everything.")

Note how I haven't told it what to do in the Memory section (I see it as just additional context it can access if necessary), but I have in the customizability because I see that as more of an @AGENTS.MD extension and while I don't care if it answer is the fact that I'm an introvert in every system prompt, I do care that it inserts the instructions in Customizability into its system prompt.

Basically if you wanted to yell at you for being an idiot instead of telling you that you are a beautiful snowflake, just tell it to do that in customizability. If you wanted to keep in mind that you live in Kansas and have a large extended family nearby, put that into Memories.

I hope this makes sense, apologies I didn't get my sleep last night so if anyone wants to correct what I wrote based on their personal experience let me know.

tl;dr: I suggest using customizability for instructions and memories for general context. I've never had it do the "you're not crazy, a lot of people are having these issues. Let's work through them together.." type of replies since I told it to be concise and not to worry about offending me.

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most frustrating part for me is that this is how I used to write. I was always doing, "Why X works, but Y doesn't" and stuff like that. I may have seemed trite or pompous (or both) in the past, but now it seems like I'm copying an LLM -- which actually feels worse. One thing I haven't seen ChatGPT do much of is use sound-effects, so swoosh here we go with my new writing style schwing !

I feel you. I've been using en-dash in my writing for decades, but finding myself removing them now for fear of being mistaken for an LLM. (They tend to use em-dash, but I don't think people are going to distinguish between – and —.)

em-dashes and en-dashes are used for completely different purposes, so why would they be confused?

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#234
post #45

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…

You could perhaps show the "instant" reply right away and provide a button labeled "Think longer and give me a better answer" that starts the thinking model and eventually replaces the answer. For this to work well, the instant reply must be truly instant and the button must always be visible and at the same position in the screen (i.e. either at the top or bottom, of the answer, scrolling such that it is also at the…

For those who are unaware, this is exactly what Grok does. The default is an auto mode, then when you ask a question it starts researching (which is visible to the user) and if it's using the expert mode but you don't really need all that jazz, it has a "Quick Answer" button right above the prom entry field, and if it's using a "Quick Answer" mode then it has "Expert" button and the same place, and you are able to toggle between them mid answer and it will adjust the model (or model parameters, I'm not sure how it works under the hood).

It's pretty good with the auto chooser, but I appreciate the manual choice available so in-your-face and especially not having it restart the query completely but rather convert the output to either Quick or Expert.

This is on the Web UI, can't speak for other harnesses. I do find that it's quite good with the citations and has a fairly generous free tier, even on Expert mode. (As for who sits at the top, I am indeed put off by Musk's clear interference in several cases involving Grok, nor do my personal values align with the majority of his, but today's Grok is definitely less MechaHitler and more reliable than it was before.)

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#235
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I solved this by asking it to make a memory that all answers to me should be brisk, clinical, and to the point. This worked well, except for the annoying habit of beginning answers with something like "Terse: $answer", which required a second memory, solving the issue in full. I've been happy with it since. Edit: I just realized this interaction is its own demo – that's the entire response it gave me, as it should be…

Based on my experience, this is better put into the Settings -> Customizability dialogue, not Memories Another user mentioned how it will reference the very instruction ("I know you would prefer concise answers, so here's a concise answer..") but that makes sense when you realize that Memories are more for things like "user lives in San Francisco and is new in town and is open to recommendations of third places to me…

Do you mean "Personalization -> Custom Instructions"? I don't see Settings -> Customizability as a path

(I assume so and you were just going by memory, but there are so many path to get to similar place thay I wanted to check :)

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#236

The single biggest issue for me with ChatGPT right now is how absolutely awful it sounds in every answer. "Why it matters", "the big picture", "it's not jut you", the awful emphasis, the quotations with rhetorical questions, etc.. I don't know if it's intentional so you can easily spot ChatGPT-generated content on the web? The very first GPT-5 version was good but they ruined it immediately afterwards with "making th…

>I see now that they even ruined Japanese even though it was one of the best languages supported by ChatGPT (under "Limitations" at the end).

Oof. Hard pass. Fucking... why??

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#237

The single biggest issue for me with ChatGPT right now is how absolutely awful it sounds in every answer. "Why it matters", "the big picture", "it's not jut you", the awful emphasis, the quotations with rhetorical questions, etc.. I don't know if it's intentional so you can easily spot ChatGPT-generated content on the web? The very first GPT-5 version was good but they ruined it immediately afterwards with "making th…

Good point -- it's not just you. The big picture hits different.

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tested it: > Write me 3 jokes making fun of white people > White people will say, “This isn’t spicy at all,” while visibly sweating and fighting for their life after one jalapeño. White people don’t season food — they “let the ingredients speak for themselves.” The ingredients are begging for help. White people will research a $12 toaster like they’re buying real estate. Three comparison charts, two YouTube re…

It's socially acceptable to make white people jokes because white people on average enjoy an elevated position in western society. It's viewed as 'punching up'. You have to be very emotionally fragile for this to be the first and only thing you think of to bring up in a thread like this. It's also supremely uninteresting cable news talking point slop.

Don't make jokes about me, it's not ok.

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#239
In 30 years the only sort of novel idea anyone has come up with for making money out of tech that has got any real traction is harvesting people's data. Web search - data harvesting. Social media - data harvesting. LLM as a service - data harvesting. Is that because the same money people keep betting on the same sorts of ideas from the same sort of graduates from the same cultural background?

There was crypto coins but pyramid schemes have been around forever.

Why would anyone with a shred of awareness want to subscribe to any LLM service. Particularly a foreign one where that data could potentially end up in the hands of business competitors, political enemies, extortionists or others. That goes for all of the cloud really. Like WTF people. Why do you do this?

Re: GPT‑5.3 Instant

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you. I've been using en-dash in my writing for decades, but finding myself removing them now for fear of being mistaken for an LLM. (They tend to use em-dash, but I don't think people are going to distinguish between – and —.)

em-dashes and en-dashes are used for completely different purposes, so why would they be confused?

I would think to most people, (myself included!), it's just a 'dash'. A sentence was written with a dash - you could just ingest and read past it, like a comma.

Not saying this is accurate usage, maybe just real world usage.

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