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GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

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Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#671

Post by plufz »

jstummbillig wrote: post #389
plufz wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have added a ”language-and-tone.md” in my coding agents docs to make them use less unnecessary jargon and filler words. For me this change sounds good, I like my token count low and my agents language short and succinct. I get what you mean, but I think ai text is often overfilled with filler jargon. Example from my file: ### Mistake: Using industry jargon unnecessarily *Bad:* > Leverages containerization technolog…

I need this badly

Just PM if you want my file as a starting point.

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#672

Post by rchaud »

butlike wrote: post #617
dkersten wrote: post #576

I don’t want more conversational, I want more to the point. Less telling me how great my question is, less about being friendly, instead I want more cold, hard, accurate, direct, and factual results. It’s a machine and a tool, not a person and definitely not my friend.

A right-to-the-facts headline, potentially clickable for expanded information. ...like a google search!

I use Gemini for Python coding questions and it provides straight to the point information, with no preamble or greeting.

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#673

Post by abustamam »

majora2007 wrote: post #626
film42 wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a cash grab. More conversational AI means more folks running out of free or lower paid tier tokens faster, leading to more upsell opportunities. API users will pay more in output tokens by default. Example, I asked Claude a high level question about p2p systems and it started writing code in 3 languages. Ignoring the code, asking a follow up about the fundamentals, it answered and then rewrote the code 3 times.…

I've had good results saying Do not code, focus on architecture first.

As another comment said, use planning mode. I don't use Claude code (I use cursor) and before they introduced planning mode, I would always say "without writing any code, design blah blah blah"

But now that there's planning mode it's a lot easier.

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#674

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

trogdor wrote: post #668
mhink wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA mentions that they added personality presets earlier this year, and just added a few more in this update: > Earlier this year, we added preset options to tailor the tone of how ChatGPT responds. Today, we’re refining those options to better reflect the most common ways people use ChatGPT. Default, Friendly (formerly Listener), and Efficient (formerly Robot) remain (with updates), and we’re adding Professional, Ca…

I just changed my ChatGPT personality setting to “Efficient.” It still starts every response with “Yeah, definitely! Let’s talk about that!” — or something similarly inefficient. So annoying.

A pet peeve of mine is that a noticeable amount of LLM output sounds like I’m getting answers from a millennial reddit user. Which is ironic considering I belong to that demographic.

I am not a fan of the snark and “trying to be fun and funny” aspect of social media discourse. Thankfully, I haven’t run into checks notes, “ding ding ding” yet.

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#675

Post by abustamam »

profunctor wrote: post #654
SquareWheel wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing shorter answers will definitely reduce their quality. Every token an LLM generates is like a little bit of extra thinking time. Sometimes it needs to work up to an answer. If you end a response too quickly, such as by demanding one-word answers, it's much more likely to produce hallucinations.

Is this proven?

It's certainly true anecdotally. I've seen it personally plenty of times and I've seen it reported plenty of times.

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#676

Post by underlipton »

Quarrel wrote: post #440
pbalau wrote: post #427

> what romanian football player won the premier league > The only Romanian football player to have won the English Premier League (as of 2025) is Florin Andone, but wait — actually, that’s incorrect; he never won the league. > ... > No Romanian footballer has ever won the Premier League (as of 2025). Yes, this is what we needed, more "conversational" ChatGPT... Let alone the fact the answer is wrong.

My worry is that they're training it on Q&A from the general public now, and that this tone, and more specifically, how obsequious it can be, is exactly what the general public want. Most of the time, I suspect, people are using it like wikipedia, but with a shortcut to cut through to the real question they want answered; and unfortunately they don't know if it is right or wrong, they just want to be told how bright…

People have been using, "It's what the [insert Blazing Saddles clip here] want!" for years to describe platform changes that dumb down features and make it harder to use tools productively. As always, it's a lie; the real reason is, "The new way makes us more money," usually by way of a dark pattern.

Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. Be overly suspicious and let them walk you back to trust (that's their job).

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#677

Post by substitious »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #674
trogdor wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just changed my ChatGPT personality setting to “Efficient.” It still starts every response with “Yeah, definitely! Let’s talk about that!” — or something similarly inefficient. So annoying.

A pet peeve of mine is that a noticeable amount of LLM output sounds like I’m getting answers from a millennial reddit user. Which is ironic considering I belong to that demographic. I am not a fan of the snark and “trying to be fun and funny” aspect of social media discourse. Thankfully, I haven’t run into checks notes , “ding ding ding” yet.

[dead]

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#678

Post by cindyllm »

embedding-shape wrote: post #611
svantana wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's analogous to how politicians nowadays are constantly saying "let me be clear", it drives me nuts.

Another annoyance: "In my honest opinion...". Does that mean that you other times are sharing dishonest opinions? Why would you need to declare that this time you're honest?

[dead]

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#679

Post by xeornet »

chrischen wrote: post #339
xeornet wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic case of thinking that the use-case HN readers want is what the rest of the world wants.

I think a bigger problem is the HN reader mind reading what the rest of the world wants. At least when an HN reader telling us what they want it's a primary source, but reading a comment about an HN reader postulating what the rest of the world wants is simply more noisy than an unrepresentative sample of what the world may want.

Point taken. However, would you say HN readers are an accurate average cross-section of broader society? Including interests and biases?

Re: GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT

#680

Post by substitious »

trashface wrote: post #664
dkersten wrote: post #576

I don’t want more conversational, I want more to the point. Less telling me how great my question is, less about being friendly, instead I want more cold, hard, accurate, direct, and factual results. It’s a machine and a tool, not a person and definitely not my friend.

It has this, "Robot" personality in settings and has been there for a few months at least. Edited - it appears to have been renamed "Efficient".

A challenge I had with "Robot" is that it would often veer away from the matter at hand, and start throwing out buzz-wordy, super high level references to things that may be tangentially relevant, but really don't belong in the current convo.

It started really getting under my skin, like a caricature of a socially inept "10x dev know-it-all" who keeps saying "but what about x? And have you solved this other thing y? Then do this for when z inevitably happens ...". At least the know-it-all 10x dev is usually right!

I'm continually tweaking my custom instructions to try to remedy this, hoping the new "Efficient" personality helps too.

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