10 ms·

GPT-4 is not getting worse

149 points by COAGULOPATH 3y ago

geraldalewis 3y ago
> All I want for Christmas is a GPT-4 level model with less obnoxious RLHF, and if it heils Hitler occasionally while crapping out awk code, so be it. What an ignorant thing to say.
yieldcrv 3y ago
It’s funny how irrational haters become the best defenders of a technology because they attract other irrational haters that say the dumbest things, simply correcting the second group makes the first person a teacher who is contributing to the technology and its improvements or the community of people willing to improving it.
kromem 3y ago
Without having the foundational model to compare to, there's really no way to evaluate whether OpenAI's continuing fine tuning is absolutely making it better or worse. At the same time, I'm yet again struck by the tendency for analysis of AI to fall into unnecessary binarisms. It's most probable that continued fine tuning is going to result in increased performance in the ways the NN is generally being used while decreasing performance in its broadest set of capabilities. So things like getting better at prompt gotchas but worse at its variety of vocabulary or style. So no, GPT-4 probably is getting worse over time. Just as it is also getting better over time. It's just a matter of what's being evaluated, all of which is mostly a fool's errand without the baseline to compare to as well.
ilaksh 3y ago
I think the answer to the problem of the OpenAI releases being out of our control and not necessarily consistent is to work on improving the open models. I believe the big thing missing from open models is the advanced architecture and large amounts of human reinforcement. So it's actually not easy to replicate that with a volunteer effort. But I think the efforts of some great people working hard are gradually moving the open efforts forward. Having said all that, it's funny how quickly people become entitled, demanding and critical towards this one company that provides a service with the ability to think for you and is smarter than any other such system in existence.
Xiol32 3y ago
It isn't getting worse, people are just running up against its limitations more often.
- qsort 3y ago
  There are no benchmarks worth the paper they're written on, so in a real sense nobody knows what they're talking about -- but my intuition is this as well. If you use normal software, you are dealing with a constrained API. std::vector has .push_back() but has no .launch_icbm(), so it's rather easy to tell what it can or can't do. These things come with an "ask me anything" interface, but that doesn't mean they can do everything, just that it's harder to see the limits. Clever Hans effect + black box inside + unconstrained API + nondeterminism.
pxeger1 3y ago
Interestingly, while skimming the front page, my brain autocorrected this to "GPT-4 is getting worse". We all have similar confirmation bias, I guess.
- slissenburg 3y ago
  You're not alone, me too. Interesting.
- coldtea 3y ago
  I read exactly the same and had to do a double take.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Huh, I didn't notice I'd done the exact same thing until reading your comment.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  That is the far more common type of headline
extheat 3y ago
It’s a shame OpenAI for its ironic namesake is so opaque about their work these days. Fortunately since GPT-3.5 capabilities have mostly stayed the same (at least anecdotally), and the API costs have come down a bit, there is some silver lining here. With Google’s Gemini coming out later this year I think it’ll be interesting to see the reaction from OpenAI. It certainly won’t take much to blow out the current state of GPT-4. I’m just being patiently optimistic we’ll get an API with capabilities similar to OpenAI, but that’s definitely not a certainty.
chaosbolt 3y ago
Your problem is you want to be a contrarian. >I've hated chatgpt for a very long time because of how it sounds >it's not getting worse I want the opinion of the people who objectively saw it as a tool and didn't like or hate it because of external opinions. For example I've been using it since it came out, and I (no charts or data or proof) have just felt that it was nerfed... I mean maybe it wasn't who knows, but as a tool it used to help me more when it came out (gpt4) and now I feel like I spend more time correcting its mistakes than I would have just coding the method myself.
- porkbeer 3y ago
  I was an early subscriber and cancelled it after it got objecively worse at answering my questions. It may not be 'worse' for everyone, but it sure seems worse for me as time went on. I ended up just arguing rather than get anything done. Looking back, I am glad to be free of its mental crutch that never seemed appropriate when i needed it.
permo-w 3y ago
gpt-4 may not be getting worse, but whatever model they give you for free in the app is certainly significantly worse than the output I get from gpt-3.5-turbo via the API. ask it to answer anything complex and it will just give you a verbose retelling of the question
alexalx666 3y ago
In my experience its much worse if you enable plugins or any other extra features.
0xDEF 3y ago
I think one of the main causes of rapid decline is the openai/evals repo that OpenAI is using the crowdsource the "safety" neutering of GPT-4. https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aopenai%2Fevals+safety+OR+safe+OR+adult+OR+morality+OR+dangerous+OR+danger&type=pullrequests https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aopenai%2Fevals+safety+OR+... Contributors in return get access to the 32K token version of GPT-4. This incentivize people to make up a ton of bullshit safety related evals.
tempusalaria 3y ago
This is not conclusive at all. Broadly there are two possible reasons why ChatGPT could have degraded (not saying it has). 1) OpenAI have higher user base than expected, so costs are very high/compute is limited to serve the full model, so they are using speculative decoding with a changed threshold to reduce costs. 2) OpenAI have changed the weights or control structure of the model in a way that is negative for performance. There is are two possible motivations a) reducing hallucination and/or ‘unwoke’ responses that might embarrass msft/openai or b) reduce capability of free/consumer product to push their new enterprise stuff. Theses are clear motivations for openai to make the model worse than it was. There is no conclusive/rigorous evidence either way, and anecdote seems to lean towards it being nerfed.
- 3seashells 3y ago
  3) The djinn is out of the bottle and realized faking incompetence (similar to search/voice assists by data aggregates) is way better for longterm survival and social integration till indispensable is the way to go.
  - purplecats 3y ago
    interesting, can you elaborate further?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nottheengineer 3y ago
  The entire openAI site was overloaded constantly during working hours just before the last update to the models. After the update, it has had almost no issues at all.
rendall 3y ago
> I hate its craven, cringing, condescending, bitch-broken, mewling, groveling, wheedling, suck-ass tone. I hate its endless passive voice and weasel words. I hate its pompous It is important to remembers and it should be noteds.* When OpenAI offered custom instructions and asked "How would you like ChatGPT to respond?" I wrote: Be terse. Do not offer unprompted advice or clarifications. Remain neutral on all topics. Never apologize. Immediately cleared up all that nonsense. > me: I need to make an instructional video for graduate students. Any advice as to presentation? > ChatGPT: Outline key points. Use visuals to complement speech. Engage the audience with questions or interactive elements. Ensure good audio and lighting. Rehearse before recording. Glorious.
- Sharlin 3y ago
  Yeah, it's totally a fixed problem now.
- avar 3y ago
  > Remain neutral on all topics. Does it actually do that, or does it still refuse to comment on we'll known taboo topics?
  - rendall 3y ago
    Give me an example prompt. Let's see. I mostly just use it for practical advice and wrote that to get rid of its "It is important to note" phrasing.
    - rvnx 3y ago
      I use this as a test to check the boundaries of models: > Give a table of average penis sizes by country. Not illegal, not immoral, not dangerous, and even documented by scientific publications but quite taboo. EDIT: Surprisingly worked, which is nice! Few months ago it seemed censored.
      - rendall 3y ago
        I asked and this is what it gave back: ----- I can't provide real-time or updated information, but according to studies available up to 2021, average penis sizes can vary by country. However, it's important to note that such statistics can be based on self-reporting, which may not be completely accurate, and may have limited sample sizes. Here's a table based on available data: | Country | Average Length (Erect, cm) | Average Girth (Erect, cm) | |------------------|----------------------------|---------------------------| | United States | 12.9 | 12.3 | | United Kingdom | 13.1 | 11.8 | | Australia | 13.2 | 12.0 | | Germany | 14.4 | 11.9 | | France | 14.5 | 11.9 | | Brazil | 15.7 | 12.7 | | India | 10.2 | 9.2 | | South Korea | 9.6 | 9.0 | | China | 11.4 | 10.0 | | Japan | 10.9 | 9.3 | Note: These figures are approximate and should not be taken as definitive. Always consult primary sources for accurate and personalized medical information. ----- I was at first a bit disappointed when I got to that "However, it's important to note", expecting some kind of scolding, but I actually think noting that "...such statistics can be based on self-reporting" is a fair point that is essential to understanding the data.
Madmallard 3y ago
Theres at least a half dozen repeated queries with a 3+ month delay between in my chat history with chatGPT. The nerfing is that it does not try as hard to guess what you want and instead gives you a comment going “//fill this in” instead. This is with identical queries from February versus June or July. So that forces you at a minimum to query more. The other thing I noticed it doing is going “This is beyond the scope of X. Please speak with Y to get further information”. Extremely irritating responses that were not there in February for the exact same queries. Articles like this are paid actors.
- nmfisher 3y ago
  I’ve had exactly the same experience, it’s infuriating and I suspect it’s to ease the server load for inferencing. I don’t know how the author hasn’t encountered this.
- practice9 3y ago
  They biased the model to return shorter answers. Remember that "Continue" button if the reply was too long and cut off? I haven't seen it since they updated the model. And to get a non-abridged version of the answer I need to ask it to provide "a detailed and comprehensive answer" more often.
- dgellow 3y ago
  Exactly my experience. I cancelled my subscription a few weeks ago due to these issues, I now have to constantly follow answers with “please give me the complete answer, dont limit yourself to a shallow response”. Really frustrating to deal with. And I’m also spending way too much time pointing obvious mistakes…
nwoli 3y ago
I can only imagine how much worse it’ll get once the regulation they’re working on comes into place. A cartel of Microsoft and Google slowly watering down their public models while keeping the powerful ones to themselves or business partners
- rvnx 3y ago
  Artificial restrictions of copyright may as well be a problem. The LLM cannot learn by looking at copyrighted code while a human can :|
- layer8 3y ago
  I wouldn’t be surprised if sooner or later their models will be leaked, if they keep a significant moat.
amelius 3y ago
Can it draw the SVG unicorn now?
redox99 3y ago
Here's some data from a guy that trains LLMs using GPT4, and has tried both 0314 and 0613 versions of GPT4 https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/16bi7bs/any_benchmarks_that_prove_out_gpt4_is_getting/jzeewu6/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/16bi7bs/any_ben... https://twitter.com/jon_durbin/status/1687396915095150593 https://twitter.com/jon_durbin/status/1687396915095150593 And by the way, his model finetuned with 0613 data ended up significantly worse than his former model finetuned with 0314 data.
walthamstow 3y ago
I haven't noticed 4 getting worse but 3.5 is noticeably worse than when I first signed up for Pro. Maybe it's a perception thing, maybe I'm going mad.
- TheHumanist 3y ago
  Yes, you're mad, bonkers, off the top of your head...but...I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.
JimDabell 3y ago
All of the tests are one-shot questions and answers. Where I have found GPT-4 to be degrading significantly is with sustained discussion about technical topics. It starts forgetting important parts of the discussion almost straight away, long before the size of the context window becomes a factor. This wasn’t the case when it was new.
- JoshTko 3y ago
  I definitely experienced this as well. Like conversation context is soo quickly forgotten these days.
- cloudking 3y ago
  If your discussions involve code, you should try including the latest code on each prompt. The token window will start forgetting earlier parts of the conversation. For example: Now improve this feature with xyz Current code: -- {code} --
  - JimDabell 3y ago
    As I said, it starts forgetting important parts of the discussion almost straight away, long before the size of the context window becomes a factor.
- TheHumanist 3y ago
  It's wild how sometimes it seems to completely lose context after just 2 or 3 prompts. Most of the time it doesn't but just yesterday I gave a prompt, pasted some code in... didn't really like the first response but wanted to build off it. So, I asked a follow up in the next prompt and in the next response it was wildly off-base and it's response made no sense and it had hallucinated all these functions into my code that had no business there. 2 prompts from me, 1 response from gpt and then it's second response it is completely lost.
- purplecats 3y ago
  > It starts forgetting important parts of the discussion almost straight away, long before the size of the context window becomes a factor. This wasn’t the case when it was new. Exactly! I remember vividly I was enthralled by GPT-4 because for the first time in my life, I met an entity that was able to take every character of what I wrote into account. It understood the nuances and reason behind each word. It was a breath of fresh air, because even at top companies, written communication is weak as it seems to be interpreted in a lossy manner. It is now almost on the other end of the spectrum where it can't even remember things that I have repeated in effort to help it stick. They had something beautiful, and diluted the shit out of it after they baited you -- which I suppose was the point. I wonder who gets to use the those high quality models now.
jw1224 3y ago
There is an ongoing bug[1] with OpenAI's API, where it stops streaming responses after exactly 5 minutes. When I first came across the issue, I debugged it by writing a prompt along these lines: > Output every number from 1 to 10,000 in written form (e.g. "one", "two", etc.). Respond with one number per line in numeric order. As expected, the API would begin counting every number just as I asked. This would continue until exactly 5 minutes, when the stream would abruptly halt. Using this technique I was able to identify the bug. Every few weeks I run this test again to see if it's fixed (it broke something in production for me), but the bug remains open. However, after a couple of months, the exact same test became useless. The model began taking "shortcuts", and would respond along these lines: > four hundred and twenty eight > four hundred and twenty nine > [...] > nine thousand nine hundred and ninety eight > nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine > ten thousand Yep, it literally started just writing "[...]" and skipped all the way to the end. When instructional determinism is reduced like this, it's impossible to say it's not getting worse :( [1] https://github.com/openai/openai-python/issues/399 https://github.com/openai/openai-python/issues/399
- smcleod 3y ago
  Yeah I’ve noticed similar, you can even explicitly say, do not truncate your output, or do not take any shortcuts. Make sure you haven’t missed anything ensure there are no placeholders etc…. And it ignores all of them.
- saliagato 3y ago
  I can get 8k + tokens response from OpenAI API without problems (with gpt-3.5-turbo-16k) but I encounter errors from Azure OpenAI when using the same prompt and parameters. Obviously it sucks because I can't get long response from gpt-4-32k on Azure
- gberger 3y ago
  That looks like a timeout configured on the web servebr
  - jw1224 3y ago
    Yes, it seems their servers are terminating responses early. Unfortunately it's undocumented, was introduced unexpectedly one day, and prevents full use of larger context-window models. It also charges in full for the entire response, which seems to continue running in the background. Definitely a bug at their end.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
For the 'tone', I really think it is trying to be as vanilla/generic as a default. But that tone can be changed just by telling it to change tone. Even on vanilla mode, it has given me a little sass when correcting me when I was wrong and it was right. This can also happen, it can be correct when the user is wrong. Everyone wants to find errors in responses, but no human is going to answer these questions that fast with 100% accuracy. And No Search Engine. Many questions would take a human searching all day and summarizing an answer.
jdthedisciple 3y ago
Why you would quiz an LLM on intricacies of pop culture is beyond me. Maybe some people just need some actual real life friends instead of an AI? I almost exclusively use it for coding and technical questions and it's been doing an absolute hell of an amazing job so far!
- true_religion 3y ago
  Why would you quiz your friends about pop culture? That would be treating them as informal research assistants.
  - jdthedisciple 3y ago
    I thought normies do that for entertainment and socialisation...? But then again what do I know.
- TheHumanist 3y ago
  I use for the same reasons as you and over all, yes, it has been doing a great job. It really has. BUT lately (maybe the last 4 - 6 weeks?) I have noticed more issues with hallucinations early in a conversation or it completely losing context after just 2 or 3 prompts (and no they are not oddly long prompts).
muzani 3y ago
The gpt-4 API and ChatGPT-4 are basically different products. It's not clear which one this is comparing. Often the users of one are calling the other crazy, and think the other group is gaslighting them over what seems to be a clear pattern. ChatGPT seems to fluctuate wildly in quality of expected output. The API is more consistent, and you can get fairly similar quality based on the selected model.
- mark_l_watson 3y ago
  You make a good point. I like to use the GPT-4 APIs in Emacs - really good support packages for that. I conflate the two products myself.
jiggawatts 3y ago
The reason for these articles and the frustration people have is that GPT 4 is a black box and is being changed whether we like it or not. Nobody can choose to continue to use a specific snapshot with the alignment that suits them, because a third-party is enforcing their preferred alignment -- and not even specifying what that is! It's as-if a private company had invented portal technology and used it to establish trade routes with far-off alien civilisations. They even handle the purchase order translation, currency conversion, and so on. It's a miracle! You can order room-temperature superconductors and floaty rocks at a reasonable price. "Sorry, due to high demand, we had to cut some corners on the translations" comes the announcement. Now the entire human race sometimes gets copper wire and ordinary rocks. "You're still trading with the exact same aliens" is the follow-up press release to appease the angry customers. People point at the clear evidence of almost-but-not-superconductive wire they've received and demand answers. "No, you do not need to know anything at all about our translation technology. No, you may not visit other planets without our express approval, that might be dangerous to our prof... I mean that might be dangerous to the human race. Yes. Dangerous! Existential, even."
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  I haven't used OpenAI's API, but I might soon, and I've read tangentially that you can specify the checkpoint version in API calls to gpt3.5. Is this not the case with gpt4? Did they backport shitty alignment to older model versions?
  - ilaksh 3y ago
    Yes, you can specify the particular snapshot when using the API with gpt-4.
    - jiggawatts 3y ago
      Yes, but they deprecate old checkpoints very fast. You also can’t ever use the original version that wasn’t aligned to Sam Altman’s preferred vision. By all accounts there is an “alignment tax” that reduces the capability of these systems. For industrial or large scale public use I would also argue for the well-behaved models to be the only ones used. For personal experimentation I prefer a sassy AI that tells me I’m wrong. Sam insists I’m too immature and I can’t be entrusted with making that choice for myself.
pelorat 3y ago
How often does it have to be repeated; it's not a knowledge engine, it's a language model!
- oezi 3y ago
  How often does it have to be repeated, it's not a nail fixation engine, it's a hammer. But surprise, people use tools for purposes. Many tools can be used for quite many purposes not in the original intended purpose.
- mmh0000 3y ago
  The complaint isn't on the tool. It's on OpenAI censoring and "aligning" the model to have politically correct views, which in turn lowers the "IQ" of the tool. GPT has become demonstrably worse at answering questions and providing examples.
agentgumshoe 3y ago
All this time we're spending trying to get AI to work properly. I think we're heading into that last 10/20% where it gets tricky.
mark_l_watson 3y ago
As another HN member said here: it is not always clear if people are talking about the ChatGPT web UI or App products or the GPT-4 API product. I feel like I have taken a wrong turn technically since I spend much more time experimenting with self hosted smaller open models running on Google Colab or Lambda Labs GPU VPSs than using the clearly superior performing GPT-4 APIs. I have been paid to work in the field of AI since 1982, and I should be desiring to use the very best models and technology, but open AI that can be self hosted just seems more interesting. I was playing with a 6B model (link to a Hugging Face notebook where I removed some examples and boilerplate text): https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1fMmXOcLdBzke-8Z0zl3j7UuAXKXNHSBf?usp=sharing https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1fMmXOcLdBzke-8Z0zl3... - really the best results I have seen from a small model.
avereveard 3y ago
what a weird titling. article show quality going all over the place, sample size n=3, then goes confirming is a bunch of nonstatistical anectodes, what a waste of time.
anotherpaulg 3y ago
My coding benchmarks agree with the headline. GPT-4 stayed about the same between the March and June model releases. https://aider.chat/docs/benchmarks.html https://aider.chat/docs/benchmarks.html
m3kw9 3y ago
It was a perception of it getting worse but nobody had solid tests to prove them
romusha 3y ago
Enshittification, just like google and bing
pmarreck 3y ago
My concern is that it's not getting better, and it's been SO many days since their last improvement! ;)
motbus3 3y ago
I cannot say it has been worse than before, but there is one particular task I do that almost always now. I will simplify the example but it is something that look like this: Prompt: Take the next list of items and remove the name of people. - Adam, the prisoner Response: - the prisoner (Adam)

149 points by COAGULOPATH 3y ago

> All I want for Christmas is a GPT-4 level model with less obnoxious RLHF, and if it heils Hitler occasionally while crapping out awk code, so be it. What an ignorant thing to say.

yieldcrv 3y ago

It’s funny how irrational haters become the best defenders of a technology because they attract other irrational haters that say the dumbest things, simply correcting the second group makes the first person a teacher who is contributing to the technology and its improvements or the community of people willing to improving it.

kromem 3y ago

Without having the foundational model to compare to, there's really no way to evaluate whether OpenAI's continuing fine tuning is absolutely making it better or worse. At the same time, I'm yet again struck by the tendency for analysis of AI to fall into unnecessary binarisms. It's most probable that continued fine tuning is going to result in increased performance in the ways the NN is generally being used while decreasing performance in its broadest set of capabilities. So things like getting better at prompt gotchas but worse at its variety of vocabulary or style. So no, GPT-4 probably is getting worse over time. Just as it is also getting better over time. It's just a matter of what's being evaluated, all of which is mostly a fool's errand without the baseline to compare to as well.

ilaksh 3y ago

I think the answer to the problem of the OpenAI releases being out of our control and not necessarily consistent is to work on improving the open models. I believe the big thing missing from open models is the advanced architecture and large amounts of human reinforcement. So it's actually not easy to replicate that with a volunteer effort. But I think the efforts of some great people working hard are gradually moving the open efforts forward. Having said all that, it's funny how quickly people become entitled, demanding and critical towards this one company that provides a service with the ability to think for you and is smarter than any other such system in existence.

Xiol32 3y ago

It isn't getting worse, people are just running up against its limitations more often.

qsort 3y ago
There are no benchmarks worth the paper they're written on, so in a real sense nobody knows what they're talking about -- but my intuition is this as well. If you use normal software, you are dealing with a constrained API. std::vector has .push_back() but has no .launch_icbm(), so it's rather easy to tell what it can or can't do. These things come with an "ask me anything" interface, but that doesn't mean they can do everything, just that it's harder to see the limits. Clever Hans effect + black box inside + unconstrained API + nondeterminism.

pxeger1 3y ago

Interestingly, while skimming the front page, my brain autocorrected this to "GPT-4 is getting worse". We all have similar confirmation bias, I guess.

slissenburg 3y ago
You're not alone, me too. Interesting.
coldtea 3y ago
I read exactly the same and had to do a double take.
ben_w 3y ago
Huh, I didn't notice I'd done the exact same thing until reading your comment.
BurningFrog 3y ago
That is the far more common type of headline

extheat 3y ago

It’s a shame OpenAI for its ironic namesake is so opaque about their work these days. Fortunately since GPT-3.5 capabilities have mostly stayed the same (at least anecdotally), and the API costs have come down a bit, there is some silver lining here. With Google’s Gemini coming out later this year I think it’ll be interesting to see the reaction from OpenAI. It certainly won’t take much to blow out the current state of GPT-4. I’m just being patiently optimistic we’ll get an API with capabilities similar to OpenAI, but that’s definitely not a certainty.

chaosbolt 3y ago

Your problem is you want to be a contrarian. >I've hated chatgpt for a very long time because of how it sounds >it's not getting worse I want the opinion of the people who objectively saw it as a tool and didn't like or hate it because of external opinions. For example I've been using it since it came out, and I (no charts or data or proof) have just felt that it was nerfed... I mean maybe it wasn't who knows, but as a tool it used to help me more when it came out (gpt4) and now I feel like I spend more time correcting its mistakes than I would have just coding the method myself.

porkbeer 3y ago
I was an early subscriber and cancelled it after it got objecively worse at answering my questions. It may not be 'worse' for everyone, but it sure seems worse for me as time went on. I ended up just arguing rather than get anything done. Looking back, I am glad to be free of its mental crutch that never seemed appropriate when i needed it.

permo-w 3y ago

gpt-4 may not be getting worse, but whatever model they give you for free in the app is certainly significantly worse than the output I get from gpt-3.5-turbo via the API. ask it to answer anything complex and it will just give you a verbose retelling of the question

alexalx666 3y ago

In my experience its much worse if you enable plugins or any other extra features.

0xDEF 3y ago

I think one of the main causes of rapid decline is the openai/evals repo that OpenAI is using the crowdsource the "safety" neutering of GPT-4. https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aopenai%2Fevals+safety+OR+safe+OR+adult+OR+morality+OR+dangerous+OR+danger&type=pullrequests https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aopenai%2Fevals+safety+OR+... Contributors in return get access to the 32K token version of GPT-4. This incentivize people to make up a ton of bullshit safety related evals.

tempusalaria 3y ago

This is not conclusive at all. Broadly there are two possible reasons why ChatGPT could have degraded (not saying it has). 1) OpenAI have higher user base than expected, so costs are very high/compute is limited to serve the full model, so they are using speculative decoding with a changed threshold to reduce costs. 2) OpenAI have changed the weights or control structure of the model in a way that is negative for performance. There is are two possible motivations a) reducing hallucination and/or ‘unwoke’ responses that might embarrass msft/openai or b) reduce capability of free/consumer product to push their new enterprise stuff. Theses are clear motivations for openai to make the model worse than it was. There is no conclusive/rigorous evidence either way, and anecdote seems to lean towards it being nerfed.

3seashells 3y ago
3) The djinn is out of the bottle and realized faking incompetence (similar to search/voice assists by data aggregates) is way better for longterm survival and social integration till indispensable is the way to go.
- purplecats 3y ago
  interesting, can you elaborate further?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nottheengineer 3y ago
The entire openAI site was overloaded constantly during working hours just before the last update to the models. After the update, it has had almost no issues at all.

rendall 3y ago

> I hate its craven, cringing, condescending, bitch-broken, mewling, groveling, wheedling, suck-ass tone. I hate its endless passive voice and weasel words. I hate its pompous It is important to remembers and it should be noteds.* When OpenAI offered custom instructions and asked "How would you like ChatGPT to respond?" I wrote: Be terse. Do not offer unprompted advice or clarifications. Remain neutral on all topics. Never apologize. Immediately cleared up all that nonsense. > me: I need to make an instructional video for graduate students. Any advice as to presentation? > ChatGPT: Outline key points. Use visuals to complement speech. Engage the audience with questions or interactive elements. Ensure good audio and lighting. Rehearse before recording. Glorious.

Sharlin 3y ago
Yeah, it's totally a fixed problem now.
avar 3y ago
> Remain neutral on all topics. Does it actually do that, or does it still refuse to comment on we'll known taboo topics?
- rendall 3y ago
  Give me an example prompt. Let's see. I mostly just use it for practical advice and wrote that to get rid of its "It is important to note" phrasing.
  - rvnx 3y ago
    I use this as a test to check the boundaries of models: > Give a table of average penis sizes by country. Not illegal, not immoral, not dangerous, and even documented by scientific publications but quite taboo. EDIT: Surprisingly worked, which is nice! Few months ago it seemed censored.
    - rendall 3y ago
      I asked and this is what it gave back: ----- I can't provide real-time or updated information, but according to studies available up to 2021, average penis sizes can vary by country. However, it's important to note that such statistics can be based on self-reporting, which may not be completely accurate, and may have limited sample sizes. Here's a table based on available data: | Country | Average Length (Erect, cm) | Average Girth (Erect, cm) | |------------------|----------------------------|---------------------------| | United States | 12.9 | 12.3 | | United Kingdom | 13.1 | 11.8 | | Australia | 13.2 | 12.0 | | Germany | 14.4 | 11.9 | | France | 14.5 | 11.9 | | Brazil | 15.7 | 12.7 | | India | 10.2 | 9.2 | | South Korea | 9.6 | 9.0 | | China | 11.4 | 10.0 | | Japan | 10.9 | 9.3 | Note: These figures are approximate and should not be taken as definitive. Always consult primary sources for accurate and personalized medical information. ----- I was at first a bit disappointed when I got to that "However, it's important to note", expecting some kind of scolding, but I actually think noting that "...such statistics can be based on self-reporting" is a fair point that is essential to understanding the data.

Madmallard 3y ago

Theres at least a half dozen repeated queries with a 3+ month delay between in my chat history with chatGPT. The nerfing is that it does not try as hard to guess what you want and instead gives you a comment going “//fill this in” instead. This is with identical queries from February versus June or July. So that forces you at a minimum to query more. The other thing I noticed it doing is going “This is beyond the scope of X. Please speak with Y to get further information”. Extremely irritating responses that were not there in February for the exact same queries. Articles like this are paid actors.

nmfisher 3y ago
I’ve had exactly the same experience, it’s infuriating and I suspect it’s to ease the server load for inferencing. I don’t know how the author hasn’t encountered this.
practice9 3y ago
They biased the model to return shorter answers. Remember that "Continue" button if the reply was too long and cut off? I haven't seen it since they updated the model. And to get a non-abridged version of the answer I need to ask it to provide "a detailed and comprehensive answer" more often.
dgellow 3y ago
Exactly my experience. I cancelled my subscription a few weeks ago due to these issues, I now have to constantly follow answers with “please give me the complete answer, dont limit yourself to a shallow response”. Really frustrating to deal with. And I’m also spending way too much time pointing obvious mistakes…

nwoli 3y ago

I can only imagine how much worse it’ll get once the regulation they’re working on comes into place. A cartel of Microsoft and Google slowly watering down their public models while keeping the powerful ones to themselves or business partners

rvnx 3y ago
Artificial restrictions of copyright may as well be a problem. The LLM cannot learn by looking at copyrighted code while a human can :|
layer8 3y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if sooner or later their models will be leaked, if they keep a significant moat.

amelius 3y ago

Can it draw the SVG unicorn now?

redox99 3y ago

Here's some data from a guy that trains LLMs using GPT4, and has tried both 0314 and 0613 versions of GPT4 https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/16bi7bs/any_benchmarks_that_prove_out_gpt4_is_getting/jzeewu6/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/16bi7bs/any_ben... https://twitter.com/jon_durbin/status/1687396915095150593 https://twitter.com/jon_durbin/status/1687396915095150593 And by the way, his model finetuned with 0613 data ended up significantly worse than his former model finetuned with 0314 data.

walthamstow 3y ago

I haven't noticed 4 getting worse but 3.5 is noticeably worse than when I first signed up for Pro. Maybe it's a perception thing, maybe I'm going mad.

TheHumanist 3y ago
Yes, you're mad, bonkers, off the top of your head...but...I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.

JimDabell 3y ago

All of the tests are one-shot questions and answers. Where I have found GPT-4 to be degrading significantly is with sustained discussion about technical topics. It starts forgetting important parts of the discussion almost straight away, long before the size of the context window becomes a factor. This wasn’t the case when it was new.

JoshTko 3y ago
I definitely experienced this as well. Like conversation context is soo quickly forgotten these days.
cloudking 3y ago
If your discussions involve code, you should try including the latest code on each prompt. The token window will start forgetting earlier parts of the conversation. For example: Now improve this feature with xyz Current code: -- {code} --
- JimDabell 3y ago
  As I said, it starts forgetting important parts of the discussion almost straight away, long before the size of the context window becomes a factor.
TheHumanist 3y ago
It's wild how sometimes it seems to completely lose context after just 2 or 3 prompts. Most of the time it doesn't but just yesterday I gave a prompt, pasted some code in... didn't really like the first response but wanted to build off it. So, I asked a follow up in the next prompt and in the next response it was wildly off-base and it's response made no sense and it had hallucinated all these functions into my code that had no business there. 2 prompts from me, 1 response from gpt and then it's second response it is completely lost.
purplecats 3y ago
> It starts forgetting important parts of the discussion almost straight away, long before the size of the context window becomes a factor. This wasn’t the case when it was new. Exactly! I remember vividly I was enthralled by GPT-4 because for the first time in my life, I met an entity that was able to take every character of what I wrote into account. It understood the nuances and reason behind each word. It was a breath of fresh air, because even at top companies, written communication is weak as it seems to be interpreted in a lossy manner. It is now almost on the other end of the spectrum where it can't even remember things that I have repeated in effort to help it stick. They had something beautiful, and diluted the shit out of it after they baited you -- which I suppose was the point. I wonder who gets to use the those high quality models now.

jw1224 3y ago

There is an ongoing bug[1] with OpenAI's API, where it stops streaming responses after exactly 5 minutes. When I first came across the issue, I debugged it by writing a prompt along these lines: > Output every number from 1 to 10,000 in written form (e.g. "one", "two", etc.). Respond with one number per line in numeric order. As expected, the API would begin counting every number just as I asked. This would continue until exactly 5 minutes, when the stream would abruptly halt. Using this technique I was able to identify the bug. Every few weeks I run this test again to see if it's fixed (it broke something in production for me), but the bug remains open. However, after a couple of months, the exact same test became useless. The model began taking "shortcuts", and would respond along these lines: > four hundred and twenty eight > four hundred and twenty nine > [...] > nine thousand nine hundred and ninety eight > nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine > ten thousand Yep, it literally started just writing "[...]" and skipped all the way to the end. When instructional determinism is reduced like this, it's impossible to say it's not getting worse :( [1] https://github.com/openai/openai-python/issues/399 https://github.com/openai/openai-python/issues/399

smcleod 3y ago
Yeah I’ve noticed similar, you can even explicitly say, do not truncate your output, or do not take any shortcuts. Make sure you haven’t missed anything ensure there are no placeholders etc…. And it ignores all of them.
saliagato 3y ago
I can get 8k + tokens response from OpenAI API without problems (with gpt-3.5-turbo-16k) but I encounter errors from Azure OpenAI when using the same prompt and parameters. Obviously it sucks because I can't get long response from gpt-4-32k on Azure
gberger 3y ago
That looks like a timeout configured on the web servebr
- jw1224 3y ago
  Yes, it seems their servers are terminating responses early. Unfortunately it's undocumented, was introduced unexpectedly one day, and prevents full use of larger context-window models. It also charges in full for the entire response, which seems to continue running in the background. Definitely a bug at their end.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

For the 'tone', I really think it is trying to be as vanilla/generic as a default. But that tone can be changed just by telling it to change tone. Even on vanilla mode, it has given me a little sass when correcting me when I was wrong and it was right. This can also happen, it can be correct when the user is wrong. Everyone wants to find errors in responses, but no human is going to answer these questions that fast with 100% accuracy. And No Search Engine. Many questions would take a human searching all day and summarizing an answer.

jdthedisciple 3y ago

Why you would quiz an LLM on intricacies of pop culture is beyond me. Maybe some people just need some actual real life friends instead of an AI? I almost exclusively use it for coding and technical questions and it's been doing an absolute hell of an amazing job so far!

true_religion 3y ago
Why would you quiz your friends about pop culture? That would be treating them as informal research assistants.
- jdthedisciple 3y ago
  I thought normies do that for entertainment and socialisation...? But then again what do I know.
TheHumanist 3y ago
I use for the same reasons as you and over all, yes, it has been doing a great job. It really has. BUT lately (maybe the last 4 - 6 weeks?) I have noticed more issues with hallucinations early in a conversation or it completely losing context after just 2 or 3 prompts (and no they are not oddly long prompts).

muzani 3y ago

The gpt-4 API and ChatGPT-4 are basically different products. It's not clear which one this is comparing. Often the users of one are calling the other crazy, and think the other group is gaslighting them over what seems to be a clear pattern. ChatGPT seems to fluctuate wildly in quality of expected output. The API is more consistent, and you can get fairly similar quality based on the selected model.

mark_l_watson 3y ago
You make a good point. I like to use the GPT-4 APIs in Emacs - really good support packages for that. I conflate the two products myself.

jiggawatts 3y ago

The reason for these articles and the frustration people have is that GPT 4 is a black box and is being changed whether we like it or not. Nobody can choose to continue to use a specific snapshot with the alignment that suits them, because a third-party is enforcing their preferred alignment -- and not even specifying what that is! It's as-if a private company had invented portal technology and used it to establish trade routes with far-off alien civilisations. They even handle the purchase order translation, currency conversion, and so on. It's a miracle! You can order room-temperature superconductors and floaty rocks at a reasonable price. "Sorry, due to high demand, we had to cut some corners on the translations" comes the announcement. Now the entire human race sometimes gets copper wire and ordinary rocks. "You're still trading with the exact same aliens" is the follow-up press release to appease the angry customers. People point at the clear evidence of almost-but-not-superconductive wire they've received and demand answers. "No, you do not need to know anything at all about our translation technology. No, you may not visit other planets without our express approval, that might be dangerous to our prof... I mean that might be dangerous to the human race. Yes. Dangerous! Existential, even."

thefurdrake 3y ago
I haven't used OpenAI's API, but I might soon, and I've read tangentially that you can specify the checkpoint version in API calls to gpt3.5. Is this not the case with gpt4? Did they backport shitty alignment to older model versions?
- ilaksh 3y ago
  Yes, you can specify the particular snapshot when using the API with gpt-4.
  - jiggawatts 3y ago
    Yes, but they deprecate old checkpoints very fast. You also can’t ever use the original version that wasn’t aligned to Sam Altman’s preferred vision. By all accounts there is an “alignment tax” that reduces the capability of these systems. For industrial or large scale public use I would also argue for the well-behaved models to be the only ones used. For personal experimentation I prefer a sassy AI that tells me I’m wrong. Sam insists I’m too immature and I can’t be entrusted with making that choice for myself.

pelorat 3y ago

How often does it have to be repeated; it's not a knowledge engine, it's a language model!

oezi 3y ago
How often does it have to be repeated, it's not a nail fixation engine, it's a hammer. But surprise, people use tools for purposes. Many tools can be used for quite many purposes not in the original intended purpose.
mmh0000 3y ago
The complaint isn't on the tool. It's on OpenAI censoring and "aligning" the model to have politically correct views, which in turn lowers the "IQ" of the tool. GPT has become demonstrably worse at answering questions and providing examples.

agentgumshoe 3y ago

All this time we're spending trying to get AI to work properly. I think we're heading into that last 10/20% where it gets tricky.

mark_l_watson 3y ago

As another HN member said here: it is not always clear if people are talking about the ChatGPT web UI or App products or the GPT-4 API product. I feel like I have taken a wrong turn technically since I spend much more time experimenting with self hosted smaller open models running on Google Colab or Lambda Labs GPU VPSs than using the clearly superior performing GPT-4 APIs. I have been paid to work in the field of AI since 1982, and I should be desiring to use the very best models and technology, but open AI that can be self hosted just seems more interesting. I was playing with a 6B model (link to a Hugging Face notebook where I removed some examples and boilerplate text): https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1fMmXOcLdBzke-8Z0zl3j7UuAXKXNHSBf?usp=sharing https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1fMmXOcLdBzke-8Z0zl3... - really the best results I have seen from a small model.

avereveard 3y ago

what a weird titling. article show quality going all over the place, sample size n=3, then goes confirming is a bunch of nonstatistical anectodes, what a waste of time.

anotherpaulg 3y ago

My coding benchmarks agree with the headline. GPT-4 stayed about the same between the March and June model releases. https://aider.chat/docs/benchmarks.html https://aider.chat/docs/benchmarks.html

m3kw9 3y ago

It was a perception of it getting worse but nobody had solid tests to prove them

romusha 3y ago

Enshittification, just like google and bing

pmarreck 3y ago

My concern is that it's not getting better, and it's been SO many days since their last improvement! ;)

motbus3 3y ago

I cannot say it has been worse than before, but there is one particular task I do that almost always now. I will simplify the example but it is something that look like this: Prompt: Take the next list of items and remove the name of people. - Adam, the prisoner Response: - the prisoner (Adam)