3 ms·

The whiplash of carefully filtering out sycophantic behavior from GPT-5 to adding it back in full force for GPT-5.1 is dystopian. We all know what's going on b

The whiplash of carefully filtering out sycophantic behavior from GPT-5 to adding it back in full force for GPT-5.1 is dystopian. We all know what's going on behind the scenes: The investors want their money.

ACCount37 11mo ago
OpenAI fought 4o, and 4o won. By now, I'm willing to pay extra to avoid OpenAI's atrocious personality tuning and their inane "safety" filters.
sunaookami 11mo ago
GPT-5 was so good in the first week, just a raw chatbot like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 were in the beginning and now it has this disgusting "happy" and "comforting" personality and "tuning" it doesn't help one bit, it makes performance way worse and after a few rounds it forgets all instructions. I've already deleted memory, past chats, etc...
- stavros 11mo ago
  Even when you tell it to not coddle you, it just says something cringeworthy like "ok, the gloves are off here's the raw deal, with New Yorker honesty:" and proceeds to feed you a ton of patronizing bullshit. It's extremely annoying.
  - helpfulclippy 11mo ago
    I’ve had some limited success attributing ideas to other people and asking it to help me assess the quality of the idea. Only limited success though. It’s still a fucking LLM.
    - stavros 11mo ago
      The issue is not that it's an LLM, the issue is that it's been RLHFed to hell to be a sycophant.
  - venturecruelty 11mo ago
    Yeah, this is why a lot of us don't use these tools.
    - stavros 11mo ago
      Yeah but baby, bathwater, throw.
      - delecti 11mo ago
        Importantly the baby in that idiom is presumed to have value.
        stavros 11mo ago
        Notably, the GP didn't say "we don't use them because they don't have value".
      - recursive 11mo ago
        That's a tar-baby.
  - chubot 11mo ago
    I have definitely experienced the sycophancy ... and LLMs have sometimes repeating talking points from real estate agents, like "you the buyer doesn't pay for an agent; the seller pays". I correct it, and it says "sorry you're right, I was repeating a talking point from an interested party" --- BUT actually a crazy thing is that -- with simple honest questions as prompts -- I found that Claude is able to explain the 2024 National Association of Realtors settlement better than anyone I know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnett_v._National_Association_of_Realtors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnett_v._National_Associatio... I have multiple family members with Ph.D.s, and friends in relatively high level management, who have managed both money and dozens of people Yet they somehow don't agree that there was collusion between buyers' and sellers' agents? They weren't aware it happened, and they also don't seem particularly interested in talking about the settlement I feel like I am taking crazy pills when talking to people I know Has anyone else experienced this? Whenever I talk to agents in person, I am also flabberghasted by the naked self-interest and self-dealing. (I'm on the east coast of the US btw) --- Specifically, based on my in-person conversations with people I have known for decades, they don't see anything odd about this kind of thing, and basically take it at face value. NAR Settlement Scripts for REALTORS to Explain to Clients https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-ESZv0dBo&list=TLPQMjQxMTIwMjX5XQaTNdURgg&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-ESZv0dBo&list=TLPQMjQxMTI... https://www.nar.realtor/the-facts/nar-settlement-faqs https://www.nar.realtor/the-facts/nar-settlement-faqs' They might even say say something like "you don't pay; the seller pays". However Claude can explain the incentives very clearly, with examples
    - titanomachy 11mo ago
      Most people conduct very few real estate transactions in their life, so maybe they just don’t care enough to remember stuff like this.
      - chubot 11mo ago
        People don't care if they're colluded against for tens of thousands of dollars? 6% of an American house is a lot of money Because it's often spread over many years of a mortgage, I can see why SOME people might not. It is not as concrete as someone stealing your car, but the amount is in the same ballpark But some people should care - these are the same people who track their stock portfolios closely, have college funds for their kids, etc. A mortgage is the biggest expense for many people, and generally speaking I've found that people don't like to get ripped off :-)
venturecruelty 11mo ago
Remarkable that you're being downvoted on a venture capital forum whose entire purpose is "take venture capital and then eventually pay it back because that's how venture capital works".

ACCount37 11mo ago

OpenAI fought 4o, and 4o won. By now, I'm willing to pay extra to avoid OpenAI's atrocious personality tuning and their inane "safety" filters.

sunaookami 11mo ago

GPT-5 was so good in the first week, just a raw chatbot like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 were in the beginning and now it has this disgusting "happy" and "comforting" personality and "tuning" it doesn't help one bit, it makes performance way worse and after a few rounds it forgets all instructions. I've already deleted memory, past chats, etc...

stavros 11mo ago
Even when you tell it to not coddle you, it just says something cringeworthy like "ok, the gloves are off here's the raw deal, with New Yorker honesty:" and proceeds to feed you a ton of patronizing bullshit. It's extremely annoying.
- helpfulclippy 11mo ago
  I’ve had some limited success attributing ideas to other people and asking it to help me assess the quality of the idea. Only limited success though. It’s still a fucking LLM.
  - stavros 11mo ago
    The issue is not that it's an LLM, the issue is that it's been RLHFed to hell to be a sycophant.
- venturecruelty 11mo ago
  Yeah, this is why a lot of us don't use these tools.
  - stavros 11mo ago
    Yeah but baby, bathwater, throw.
    - delecti 11mo ago
      Importantly the baby in that idiom is presumed to have value.
      - stavros 11mo ago
        Notably, the GP didn't say "we don't use them because they don't have value".
    - recursive 11mo ago
      That's a tar-baby.
- chubot 11mo ago
  I have definitely experienced the sycophancy ... and LLMs have sometimes repeating talking points from real estate agents, like "you the buyer doesn't pay for an agent; the seller pays". I correct it, and it says "sorry you're right, I was repeating a talking point from an interested party" --- BUT actually a crazy thing is that -- with simple honest questions as prompts -- I found that Claude is able to explain the 2024 National Association of Realtors settlement better than anyone I know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnett_v._National_Association_of_Realtors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnett_v._National_Associatio... I have multiple family members with Ph.D.s, and friends in relatively high level management, who have managed both money and dozens of people Yet they somehow don't agree that there was collusion between buyers' and sellers' agents? They weren't aware it happened, and they also don't seem particularly interested in talking about the settlement I feel like I am taking crazy pills when talking to people I know Has anyone else experienced this? Whenever I talk to agents in person, I am also flabberghasted by the naked self-interest and self-dealing. (I'm on the east coast of the US btw) --- Specifically, based on my in-person conversations with people I have known for decades, they don't see anything odd about this kind of thing, and basically take it at face value. NAR Settlement Scripts for REALTORS to Explain to Clients https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-ESZv0dBo&list=TLPQMjQxMTIwMjX5XQaTNdURgg&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-ESZv0dBo&list=TLPQMjQxMTI... https://www.nar.realtor/the-facts/nar-settlement-faqs https://www.nar.realtor/the-facts/nar-settlement-faqs' They might even say say something like "you don't pay; the seller pays". However Claude can explain the incentives very clearly, with examples
  - titanomachy 11mo ago
    Most people conduct very few real estate transactions in their life, so maybe they just don’t care enough to remember stuff like this.
    - chubot 11mo ago
      People don't care if they're colluded against for tens of thousands of dollars? 6% of an American house is a lot of money Because it's often spread over many years of a mortgage, I can see why SOME people might not. It is not as concrete as someone stealing your car, but the amount is in the same ballpark But some people should care - these are the same people who track their stock portfolios closely, have college funds for their kids, etc. A mortgage is the biggest expense for many people, and generally speaking I've found that people don't like to get ripped off :-)

venturecruelty 11mo ago

Remarkable that you're being downvoted on a venture capital forum whose entire purpose is "take venture capital and then eventually pay it back because that's how venture capital works".