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Sam Altman wrote in February that GPT-4.5 would be "our last non-chain-of-thought model" [1], but GPT-4.1 also does not have internal chain-of-thought [2]. It

by comex 1y ago

Sam Altman wrote in February that GPT-4.5 would be "our last non-chain-of-thought model" [1], but GPT-4.1 also does not have internal chain-of-thought [2]. It seems like OpenAI keeps changing its plans. Deprecating GPT-4.5 less than 2 months after introducing it also seems unlikely to be the original plan. Changing plans is necessarily a bad thing, but I wonder why. Did they not expect this model to turn out as well as it did? [1] https://x.com/sama/status/1889755723078443244 https://x.com/sama/status/1889755723078443244 [2] https://github.com/openai/openai-cookbook/blob/6a47d53c967a04ebb56fe9592cf5e0423e31b286/examples/gpt4-1_prompting_guide.ipynb#L57 https://github.com/openai/openai-cookbook/blob/6a47d53c967a0...

wongarsu 1y ago
Maybe that's why they named this model 4.1, despite coming out after 4.5 and supposedly outperforming it. They can pretend GPT-4.5 is the last non-chain-of-thought model by just giving all non-chain-of-thought-models version numbers below 4.5
- chrisweekly 1y ago
  Ok, I know naming things is hard, but 4.1 comes out after 4.5? Just, wat.
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    For a long time, you could fool models with questions like "Which is greater, 4.10 or 4.5?" Maybe they're still struggling with that at OpenAI.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      At this point, I'm just assuming most AI models — not just OpenAI's — name themselves. And that they write their own press releases.
Cheer2171 1y ago
Why do you expect to believe a single word Sam Altman says?
- sigmoid10 1y ago
  Everyone assumed malice when the board fired him for not always being "candid" - but it seems more and more that he's just clueless. He's definitely capable when it comes to raising money as a business, but I wouldn't count on any tech opinion from him.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
observationist 1y ago
Anyone making claims with a horizon beyond two months about structure or capabilities will be wrong - it's sama's job to show confidence and vision and calm stakeholders, but if you're paying attention to the field, the release and research cycles are still contracting, with no sense of slowing any time soon. I've followed AI research daily since GPT-2, the momentum is incredible, and even if the industry sticks with transformers, there are years left of low hanging fruit and incremental improvements before things start slowing. There doesn't appear to be anything that these AI models cannot do, in principle, given sufficient data and compute. They've figured out multimodality and complex integration, self play for arbitrary domains, and lots of high-cost longer term paradigms that will push capabilities forwards for at least 2 decades in conjunction with Moore's law. Things are going to continue getting better, faster, and weirder. If someone is making confident predictions beyond those claims, it's probably their job.
- sottol 1y ago
  Maybe that's true for absolute arm-chair-engineering outsiders (like me) but these models are in training for months, training data is probably being prepared year(s) in advance. These models have a knowledge cut-off in 2024 - so they have been in training for a while. There's no way sama did not have a good idea that this non-COT was in the pipeline 2 months ago. It was probably finished training then and undergoing evals. Maybe 1. he's just doing his job and hyping OpenAI's competitive advantages (afair most of the competition didn't have decent COT models in Feb), or 2. something changed and they're releasing models now that they didn't intend to release 2 months ago (maybe because a model they did intend to release is not ready and won't be for a while), or 3. COT is not really as advantageous as it was deemed to be 2+ months ago and/or computationally too expensive.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    With new hardware from Nvidia announced coming out, those months turn into weeks.
    - sottol 1y ago
adamgordonbell 1y ago
Perhaps it is a distilled 4.5, or based on it's lineage, as some suggested.
zitterbewegung 1y ago
I think that people balked at the cost of 4.5 and really wanted just a slightly more improved 4o . Now it almost seems that they will have a separate products that are non chain of thought and chain of thought series which actually makes sense because some want a cheap model and some don't.
freehorse 1y ago
> Deprecating GPT-4.5 less than 2 months after introducing it also seems unlikely to be the original plan. Well they actually hinted already of possible depreciation in their initial announcement of gpt4.5 [0]. Also, as others said, this model was already offered in the api as chatgpt-latest, but there was no checkpoint which made it unreliable for actual use. [0] https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-4-5/#:~:text=we%E2%80%99re%20evaluating%20whether%20to%20continue%20serving%20it%20in%20the%20API%20long%2Dterm%20as%20we%20balance%20supporting%20current%20capabilities%20with%20building%20future%20models https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-4-5/#:~:text=we%E2%...
resource_waste 1y ago
When I saw them say 'no more non COT models', I was minorly panicked. While their competitors have made fantastic models, at the time I perceived ChatGPT4 was the best model for many applications. COT was often tricked by my prompts, assuming things to be true, when a non-COT model would say something like 'That isnt necessarily the case'. I use both COT and non when I have an important problem. Seeing them keep a non-COT model around is a good idea.

by comex 1y ago

wongarsu 1y ago

Maybe that's why they named this model 4.1, despite coming out after 4.5 and supposedly outperforming it. They can pretend GPT-4.5 is the last non-chain-of-thought model by just giving all non-chain-of-thought-models version numbers below 4.5

chrisweekly 1y ago
Ok, I know naming things is hard, but 4.1 comes out after 4.5? Just, wat.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  For a long time, you could fool models with questions like "Which is greater, 4.10 or 4.5?" Maybe they're still struggling with that at OpenAI.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    At this point, I'm just assuming most AI models — not just OpenAI's — name themselves. And that they write their own press releases.

Cheer2171 1y ago

Why do you expect to believe a single word Sam Altman says?

sigmoid10 1y ago
Everyone assumed malice when the board fired him for not always being "candid" - but it seems more and more that he's just clueless. He's definitely capable when it comes to raising money as a business, but I wouldn't count on any tech opinion from him.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

observationist 1y ago

Anyone making claims with a horizon beyond two months about structure or capabilities will be wrong - it's sama's job to show confidence and vision and calm stakeholders, but if you're paying attention to the field, the release and research cycles are still contracting, with no sense of slowing any time soon. I've followed AI research daily since GPT-2, the momentum is incredible, and even if the industry sticks with transformers, there are years left of low hanging fruit and incremental improvements before things start slowing. There doesn't appear to be anything that these AI models cannot do, in principle, given sufficient data and compute. They've figured out multimodality and complex integration, self play for arbitrary domains, and lots of high-cost longer term paradigms that will push capabilities forwards for at least 2 decades in conjunction with Moore's law. Things are going to continue getting better, faster, and weirder. If someone is making confident predictions beyond those claims, it's probably their job.

sottol 1y ago
Maybe that's true for absolute arm-chair-engineering outsiders (like me) but these models are in training for months, training data is probably being prepared year(s) in advance. These models have a knowledge cut-off in 2024 - so they have been in training for a while. There's no way sama did not have a good idea that this non-COT was in the pipeline 2 months ago. It was probably finished training then and undergoing evals. Maybe 1. he's just doing his job and hyping OpenAI's competitive advantages (afair most of the competition didn't have decent COT models in Feb), or 2. something changed and they're releasing models now that they didn't intend to release 2 months ago (maybe because a model they did intend to release is not ready and won't be for a while), or 3. COT is not really as advantageous as it was deemed to be 2+ months ago and/or computationally too expensive.
- fragmede 1y ago
  With new hardware from Nvidia announced coming out, those months turn into weeks.
  - sottol 1y ago

adamgordonbell 1y ago

Perhaps it is a distilled 4.5, or based on it's lineage, as some suggested.

zitterbewegung 1y ago

I think that people balked at the cost of 4.5 and really wanted just a slightly more improved 4o . Now it almost seems that they will have a separate products that are non chain of thought and chain of thought series which actually makes sense because some want a cheap model and some don't.

freehorse 1y ago

> Deprecating GPT-4.5 less than 2 months after introducing it also seems unlikely to be the original plan. Well they actually hinted already of possible depreciation in their initial announcement of gpt4.5 [0]. Also, as others said, this model was already offered in the api as chatgpt-latest, but there was no checkpoint which made it unreliable for actual use. [0] https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-4-5/#:~:text=we%E2%80%99re%20evaluating%20whether%20to%20continue%20serving%20it%20in%20the%20API%20long%2Dterm%20as%20we%20balance%20supporting%20current%20capabilities%20with%20building%20future%20models https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-4-5/#:~:text=we%E2%...

resource_waste 1y ago

When I saw them say 'no more non COT models', I was minorly panicked. While their competitors have made fantastic models, at the time I perceived ChatGPT4 was the best model for many applications. COT was often tricked by my prompts, assuming things to be true, when a non-COT model would say something like 'That isnt necessarily the case'. I use both COT and non when I have an important problem. Seeing them keep a non-COT model around is a good idea.