Earlier quoted context omitted.
ChatGPT has been doing the same consistently for years. Model starts out smooth, takes a while, and produces good (relatively) results. Within a few weeks, responses start happening much more quickly, at a poorer quality.
people have been complaining about this since GPT-4 and have never been able to provide any evidence (even though they have all their old conversations in their chat history). I think it’s simply new model shininess turning into raised expectations after some amount of time.
The background being that we scrapped working on a feature and then started again a sprint later.
In my cynicism I find it more likely that a massively unprofitable LLM company tries to reduce costs at any price than everyone else suffering from a collective delusion.