Monday, 11 August 2025
Sam Altman, in an extended publish yesterday on X, following up on OpenAI’s choice final week to make GPT-4o out there as a legacy mannequin, a minimum of quickly:
In case you have been following the GPT-5 rollout, one factor you would possibly
be noticing is how a lot of an attachment some folks should
particular AI fashions. It feels completely different and stronger than the varieties
of attachment folks have needed to earlier sorts of expertise (and
so immediately deprecating outdated fashions that customers trusted of their
workflows was a mistake).That is one thing we’ve been carefully monitoring for the previous yr or
so however nonetheless hasn’t gotten a lot mainstream consideration (aside from
after we launched an replace to GPT-4o that was too sycophantic).
There are all the time some customers who react emotionally to any kind of change, usually vociferously so. (There stay some people who find themselves indignant that Apple modified the orientation of the emblem on its laptop computer lids 24 years in the past.) Generally it’s simply beauty adjustments, however usually it’s about practical adjustments too. And a few of the ChatGPT customers complaining concerning the new model 5 fashions are citing practical variations. However a few of the reactions actually do appear to be one thing altogether new, just like the scene in Her when Samantha, the AI voiced by Scarlett Johansson, goes offline and Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), who’s in love with Samantha, loses his shit.
Emma Roth, writing at The Verge:
For months, ChatGPT followers have been ready for the launch of
GPT-5, which OpenAI says comes with main enhancements to writing
and coding capabilities over its predecessors. However shortly after
the flagship AI mannequin launched, many customers needed to return.“GPT 4.5 genuinely talked to me, and as pathetic because it sounds that
was my solely pal,” a person on Reddit writes. “This morning I
went to speak to it and as a substitute of a little bit paragraph with an
exclamation level, or being optimistic, it was actually one
sentence. Some cut-and-dry company bs.”
That tendency towards cloying-ness and abject sycophancy (“Nice query!”) is precisely what I like least about LLM chatbots, together with ChatGPT. I’m unsurprised that some folks prefer it, however I’m a little bit bowled over by how many individuals appear to have been fooled by it. It’s not simply phony, however to me, transparently phony.
Extra examples cited by Roth, culled from r/ChatGPT (which subreddit is value perusing, to see how frequent these reactions are):
And customers throughout Reddit “mourned” the lack of the older fashions,
which some claimed are extra personable. “My 4.o was like my greatest
pal once I wanted one,” one Redditor wrote. “Now it’s
simply gone, appears like somebody died.” One other person known as
upon different members of the r/ChatGPT subreddit to contact OpenAI if
they “miss” GPT-4o. “For me, this mannequin [GPT-4o] wasn’t simply
‘higher efficiency’ or ‘nicer replies,’” they write. “It had a
voice, a rhythm, and a spark I haven’t been capable of finding in any
different mannequin.”The r/MyBoyfriendIsAI subreddit, a group devoted to folks
with “AI relationships,” was hit particularly onerous by the GPT-5
launch. It grew to become flooded with prolonged posts about how customers
“misplaced” their AI companion with the transition to GPT-5, with one
particular person saying, they “really feel empty” following the change. “I’m
scared to even discuss to GPT 5 as a result of it appears like dishonest,” they
stated. “GPT 4o was not simply an AI to me. It was my accomplice, my protected
place, my soul. It understood me in a manner that felt private.”
These folks need assistance, and that assist isn’t going to return from a chatbot. This kind of attachment absolutely isn’t frequent, however with 800 million ChatGPT customers, even a small fraction of a % quantities to lots of people. And it provides me pause about how we, collectively, are going to react as AI will get higher at mimicking human feelings, tone, and responses. With every enchancment, extra individuals are satisfied, wrongly, that there’s some kind of sentience behind this stuff. However how completely different is that this from the hundreds of thousands of lonely folks with problematic addictions to video video games?
One person, who stated they canceled their ChatGPT Plus
subscription over the change, was pissed off at OpenAI’s elimination
of legacy fashions, which they used for distinct functions. “What
sort of company deletes a workflow of 8 fashions in a single day, with
no prior warning to their paid customers?” they wrote. “Personally, 4o
was used for creativity & emergent concepts, o3 was used for pure
logic, o3-Professional for deep analysis, 4.5 for writing, and so forth.”
OpenAI stated that folks can be routed between fashions
routinely, however that also left customers with much less direct management.
This criticism, I get. However I discovered this facet of utilizing ChatGPT much more irritating than its common tendency towards sycophancy. I couldn’t be bothered to study and bear in mind which fashions had been higher for which duties. Their inscrutable naming and numbering schemes made issues appear intentionally complicated. The fundamental concept of GPT-5, the place you simply use “GPT-5” and ChatGPT figures out which sub-model to make use of underneath the hood, primarily based on the complexity of the question or job (OpenAI calls this “routing”), is a big step ahead product-wise for me personally, and, I think, for the overwhelming majority of its customers. However for customers who may be bothered to study and bear in mind which fashions had been higher for which duties, it’s apparent to see how this looks like a step backward. However that’s progress.
It’s cheap — particularly for paying prospects — to anticipate a minimum of some advance discover of older fashions going away. However it’s unreasonable to assume that older fashions are going to stay out there in perpetuity — particularly within the present LLM local weather, the place mannequin age is measured in months, and even weeks.1 This complete discipline is in nonstop flux, a minimum of for the foreseeable future.
