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OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

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Re: OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

#451
post #298

Ok, I’m a bit underwhelmed. I’ve asked it a fairly technical question, about a very niche topic (Final Fantasy VII reverse engineering): https://chatgpt.com/share/68001766-92c8-8004-908f-fb185b7549... With right knowledge and web searches one can answer this question in a matter of minutes at most. The model fumbled around modding forums and other sites and did manage to find some good information but then started to…

Btw Ive also asked this question using Deep Research mode in ChatGPT and got the correct answer: https://chatgpt.com/share/68009a09-2778-8004-af40-4a8e7e812b...

So maybe this is just too hard for a “non-research” mode. I’m still disappointed it lied to me instead of saying it couldn’t find an answer.

Re: OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even compared to just a few years back, people seem more often to struggle to carry a thought, and resort much more quickly to emotional belligerence. We're living in extremely uncertain times, with multiple global crises taking place at the same time, each of which could develop into a turning point for humankind. At the same time, predatory algorithms do whatever it takes to make people addicted to media, while m…

I feel perhaps I've been unkind to many people in my thoughts, but I'm conflicted. I don't understand myself to be particularly fearless, but what times call more for courage than times like these? How do people afraid even to try to practice courage expect to find it, when there isn't time for practice any more?

You have only so many spoons available per crisis. Even picking your battle can become a problem.

I've been out in the streets, protesting and raising awareness of climate change. I no longer do. It's a pointless waste of time. Today, the climate change deniers are in charge.

Re: OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used AI with "niche" programming questions and it's always a total let down. I truly don't understand this "vibe coding" movement unless everyone is building todo apps.

There's a bit of a skill to it. Good architecture plans help. Telling it where in an existing code base it can find things to pattern match against is also fantastic. I'll often end up with a task that looks something like this: * Implement Foo with a relation to FooBar. * Foo should have X, Y, Z features * We have an existing pattern for Fidget in BigFidget. Look at that for implementation * Make sure you account fo…

> Good architecture plans help.

This is they key answer right here.

LLMs are great at interpolating and extrapolating based on context. Interpolating is far less error-prone. The problem with interpolating is that you need to start with accurate points so that interpolating between them leads to expected and relatively accurate estimates.

What we are seeing is the result of developers being oblivious to higher-level aspects of coding, such as software architecture, proper naming conventions, disciplined choice of dependencies and dependency management, and even best practices. Even basic requirements-gathering.

Their own personal experience is limited to diving into existing code bases and patching them here and there. They often screw up the existing software architecture because their lack of insight and awareness leads them to post PRs that get the job done at the expense of polluting the whole codebase into an unmanageable mess.

So these developers crack open an LLM and prompt it to generate code. They use their insights and personal experience to guide their prompts. Their experience reflects what they do on a daily basis. The LLMs of course generate code from their prompts, and the result is underwhelming. Garbage-in, garbage-out.

It's the LLMs fault, right? All the vibe coders out there showcasing good results must be frauds.

The telltale sign of how poor these developers are is how they dump the responsibility of they failing to get LLMs to generate acceptable results on the models not being good enough. The same models that are proven effective at creating whole projects from scratch at their hands are incapable of the smallest changes. It's weird how that sounds, right? If only the models were better... Better at what? At navigating through your input to achieve things that others already achieve? That's certainly the model's fault, isn't it?

A bad workman always blames his tools.

Re: OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used AI with "niche" programming questions and it's always a total let down. I truly don't understand this "vibe coding" movement unless everyone is building todo apps.

I recently exclaimed that “vibe coding is BS” to one of my coworkers before explaining that I’ve actually been using GPT, Claude, llama (for airplanes), Cline, Cursor, Windsurf, and more for coding for as long as they’ve been available (more recently playing with Gemini). Cline + Sonnet 3.7 has been giving me great results on smaller projects with popular languages, and I feel truly fortunate to have AWS Bedrock on t…

> That said, 100% pure vibe coding is, as far as I can tell, still very much BS.

I don't really agree. There's certainly a showboating factor, not to mention there is currently a goldrush to tap this movement to capitalize from it. However, I personally managed to create a fully functioning web app from scratch with Copilot+vs code using a mix of GPT4 and o1-mini. I'm talking about both backend and frontend, with basic auth in place. I am by no means a expert, but I did it in an afternoon. Call it BS, the the truth of the matter is that the app exists.

Re: OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

#457
post #298

Ok, I’m a bit underwhelmed. I’ve asked it a fairly technical question, about a very niche topic (Final Fantasy VII reverse engineering): https://chatgpt.com/share/68001766-92c8-8004-908f-fb185b7549... With right knowledge and web searches one can answer this question in a matter of minutes at most. The model fumbled around modding forums and other sites and did manage to find some good information but then started to…

What's the correct answer? Curious if it got it right the second time: https://chatgpt.com/share/68009f36-a068-800e-987e-e6aaf190ec...

Re: OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, because humans can form long term memories from conversations, but LLM users aren’t finetuning models after every chat so the model remembers.

users aren’t finetuning models after every chat Users can do that if they want, but it’s more effective and more efficient to do that after every billion chats, and I’m sure OpenAI does it.

If you want the entire model to remember everything it talked about with every user, sure. But ideally, I would want the model to remember what I told it a few million tokens ago, but not what you told it (because to me, the model should look like my private copy that only talks to me).

Re: OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize. It was my Haskell life period.

I forgive you as I hope you forgive me. Flakes are certainly much better than Nix without them, and they’ve saved me much more time than they’ve cost me.

Man ... Classic HN.

But yes unfortunately even if you across the whole functional paradigm, nix is surely complicated. And one single file whole system up is rarely true.

Re: OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

#460
If you download GIMP, Blender etc - every user would have to report exactly the same experience mostly given the hardware is recent.

In this thread however - there are varying experiences from amazing to awful. I'm not saying anyone is wrong but all I'm saying is that this wide range of operational accuracy is what will pop the AI bubble eventually in that they can't be reliably deployed almost anywhere with any certainty or guarantees of any sorts.

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