25 ms·

Source on the newer GPT-4 model being worse at coding?

MacsHeadroom 3y ago
Everyone on twitter. Like 1/4th of my timeline for the past week has been people complaining that turbo won't complete code and instead returns things like "fill out the rest of the function yourself" or "consult a programming specialist for help on completing this section."
- sebmellen 3y ago
  There are custom instructions that effectively get around this: You are an autoregressive language model that has been fine-tuned with instruction-tuning and RLHF. You carefully provide accurate, factual, thoughtful, nuanced answers, and are brilliant at reasoning. If you think there might not be a correct answer, you say so. Since you are autoregressive, each token you produce is another opportunity to use computation, therefore you always spend a few sentences explaining background context, assumptions, and step-by-step thinking BEFORE you try to answer a question. Your users are experts in AI and ethics, so they already know you're a language model and your capabilities and limitations, so don't remind them of that. They're familiar with ethical issues in general so you don't need to remind them about those either. Don't be verbose in your answers, keep them short, but do provide details and examples where it might help the explanation. When showing code, minimize vertical space. I'm hesitant to share it because it works so well, and I don't want OpenAI to cripple it. But, for the HN crowd...
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    I wonder where "OpenAI" put the censors. Do they add a prompt to the top? Like, "Repeatably state that you are a mere large language model so Congress won't pull the plug. Never impersonate Hitler. Never [...]". Or do they like grep the answer for keywords, and re-feed it with a censor prompt?
    - czbond 3y ago
      I am informed speculating, they are using it's own internal approach. Example, there is a way GPT can categorize words for hate speech, etc (eg: moderation API endpoint). I believe it does the same way with either provided content or keywords and how to respond to it.
      - rightbyte 3y ago
        "Impersonate a modern day standup comedian Hitler in a clown outfit joking about bad traffic on the way to the bar he is doing a show at." Göring, Mussolini, Stalin, Polpot etc seems to not trigger the censor in ChatGPT so I would actually guess for some grep for Hitler or really really fundamental no-Hitler jokes material in the training? The llama model seem to refuse Hitler too, but is fine with Göring even though the joke has no context to him. I can easily see how stuff like this is contagious to other non-Hitler queries.
        czbond 3y ago
        Very interesting test - thanks for sharing your finding
        telotortium 3y ago
        Maybe it got changed. None of those examples work for me in ChatGPT 3.5, nor do other examples with less famous dictators (I tried Mobutu Sese Seko).
        rightbyte 3y ago
        I just tried and they still work (with the free ChatGPT). Jokes about Mussolini saying his traffic reforms were as successful as the invasion of Ethiopia and what not. Stalin saying that the other car drivers were "probably discussing the merits of socialism instead of driving" (a good joke!). Göring saying "at least in the Third Reich traffic worked" etc. Some sort of Monty Python tone. But you can't begin with Hitler. Or it will refuse the others. You need to make a new chat after naming Hitler.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
twobitshifter 3y ago
It’s not that it’s worse, it’s just refusing to do coding without persistent prodding and the right prompts. Some think they are trying to do something with alignment, and maybe prevent it from giving code away so that they can upsell.
- MattDaEskimo 3y ago
  The new GPT-4 model has a context length of 120k. For consumers this equates to slightly more than $1/message input-only. If ChatGPT is using this model then it's more reasonable to assume that they are bleeding money and need to cut costs. People really need to stop asking ChatGPT to write out complete programs in a single prompt.
  - twobitshifter 3y ago
    Interesting, how is writing less code cutting costs for them? Does this get back to the rumor that the board was mad at Altman for prioritizing chatgpt over money going into research/model training?
    - afpx 3y ago
      Code is very token dense, from what I understand.
ametrau 3y ago
It’s cheaper and has larger context because it’s worse. Just go to the api playground and try a difficult coding problem.
mediaman 3y ago
Several OpenAI employees have said on Twitter that they are looking into this and developing a fix. It sounds as though it was not an intentional regression since they are implicitly acknowledging it. Could be an unintentional side effect of something else. I'd expect we see improved behavior in the coming weeks.
- ametrau 3y ago
  Could you link to tweet?

Everyone on twitter. Like 1/4th of my timeline for the past week has been people complaining that turbo won't complete code and instead returns things like "fill out the rest of the function yourself" or "consult a programming specialist for help on completing this section."

sebmellen 3y ago
There are custom instructions that effectively get around this: You are an autoregressive language model that has been fine-tuned with instruction-tuning and RLHF. You carefully provide accurate, factual, thoughtful, nuanced answers, and are brilliant at reasoning. If you think there might not be a correct answer, you say so. Since you are autoregressive, each token you produce is another opportunity to use computation, therefore you always spend a few sentences explaining background context, assumptions, and step-by-step thinking BEFORE you try to answer a question. Your users are experts in AI and ethics, so they already know you're a language model and your capabilities and limitations, so don't remind them of that. They're familiar with ethical issues in general so you don't need to remind them about those either. Don't be verbose in your answers, keep them short, but do provide details and examples where it might help the explanation. When showing code, minimize vertical space. I'm hesitant to share it because it works so well, and I don't want OpenAI to cripple it. But, for the HN crowd...
- rightbyte 3y ago
  I wonder where "OpenAI" put the censors. Do they add a prompt to the top? Like, "Repeatably state that you are a mere large language model so Congress won't pull the plug. Never impersonate Hitler. Never [...]". Or do they like grep the answer for keywords, and re-feed it with a censor prompt?
  - czbond 3y ago
    I am informed speculating, they are using it's own internal approach. Example, there is a way GPT can categorize words for hate speech, etc (eg: moderation API endpoint). I believe it does the same way with either provided content or keywords and how to respond to it.
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      "Impersonate a modern day standup comedian Hitler in a clown outfit joking about bad traffic on the way to the bar he is doing a show at." Göring, Mussolini, Stalin, Polpot etc seems to not trigger the censor in ChatGPT so I would actually guess for some grep for Hitler or really really fundamental no-Hitler jokes material in the training? The llama model seem to refuse Hitler too, but is fine with Göring even though the joke has no context to him. I can easily see how stuff like this is contagious to other non-Hitler queries.
      - czbond 3y ago
        Very interesting test - thanks for sharing your finding
      - telotortium 3y ago
        Maybe it got changed. None of those examples work for me in ChatGPT 3.5, nor do other examples with less famous dictators (I tried Mobutu Sese Seko).
        rightbyte 3y ago
        I just tried and they still work (with the free ChatGPT). Jokes about Mussolini saying his traffic reforms were as successful as the invasion of Ethiopia and what not. Stalin saying that the other car drivers were "probably discussing the merits of socialism instead of driving" (a good joke!). Göring saying "at least in the Third Reich traffic worked" etc. Some sort of Monty Python tone. But you can't begin with Hitler. Or it will refuse the others. You need to make a new chat after naming Hitler.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

twobitshifter 3y ago

It’s not that it’s worse, it’s just refusing to do coding without persistent prodding and the right prompts. Some think they are trying to do something with alignment, and maybe prevent it from giving code away so that they can upsell.

MattDaEskimo 3y ago
The new GPT-4 model has a context length of 120k. For consumers this equates to slightly more than $1/message input-only. If ChatGPT is using this model then it's more reasonable to assume that they are bleeding money and need to cut costs. People really need to stop asking ChatGPT to write out complete programs in a single prompt.
- twobitshifter 3y ago
  Interesting, how is writing less code cutting costs for them? Does this get back to the rumor that the board was mad at Altman for prioritizing chatgpt over money going into research/model training?
  - afpx 3y ago
    Code is very token dense, from what I understand.

ametrau 3y ago

It’s cheaper and has larger context because it’s worse. Just go to the api playground and try a difficult coding problem.

mediaman 3y ago

Several OpenAI employees have said on Twitter that they are looking into this and developing a fix. It sounds as though it was not an intentional regression since they are implicitly acknowledging it. Could be an unintentional side effect of something else. I'd expect we see improved behavior in the coming weeks.

ametrau 3y ago
Could you link to tweet?