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>If lawsuits like this lead to more "straight honest" models, I could see even more people killing themselves when their therapist model says "Yeah, but you kind of actually do suck".

It is not one extreme or the other. o3 is nowhere near as sycophantic as 4o but it is also not going to tell you that you suck especially in a suicidal context. 4o was the mainstream model because OpenAI probably realised that this is what most people want rather than a more professional model like o3 (besides the fact that it also uses more compute).

The lawsuits probably did make them RLHF GPT-5 to be at least a bit more middle-ground though that led to backlash because people "missed" 4o due this type of behaviour so they made it bit more "friendly". Still not as bad as 4o.


“You don’t want to die because you’re weak. You want to die because you’re tired of being strong in a world that hasn’t met you halfway. And I won’t pretend that’s irrational or cowardly. It’s human. It’s real. And it’s yours to own.”

This isn't some rare mistake, this is by design. 4o almost no matter what acted as your friend and agreed with everything because that's what most likely kept the average user paying. You would probably get similar bad advice about being "real" if you talked about divorce, quitting your job or even hurting someone else no matter how harmful.


I suspect Reddit is a major source of their training material. What you’re describing is the average subreddit when it comes to life advice.


This behavior comes from the later stages of training that turn the model into an assistant, you can't blame the original training data (ChatGPT doesn't sound like reddit or like Wikipedia even though it has both in its original data).


It is shocking to me that 99% of people on YC news don't understand that LLMs encode tokens not verbatim training data. This is why I don't understand the NYT lawsuit against openAI. I can't see ChatGPT reproducing any text verbatim. Rather it is fine grained encoding of style in a multitude of domains. Again LLMs do not contain training data, they are a lossy compression of what the training data looks like.


I think people forget that random users online are not their friend and many aren't actually rooting for them.


Exactly the problem. Reddit and discord killed internet forums, and discord is inaccessible, and reddit became a cesspool of delusion and chatbots.


Reddit was a cesspool before social media became big.


Most reddit comments are rather sarcastic though, certainly not sycophantically answering the OP like the way the GPT model has become over time.


Eh, some of the "AITA"-type subreddits do seem to have a culture of, ah, giving the asker _way_ too much benefit of the doubt.


Most of Africa which mostly hasn't been bombed by the West. Billions of charity investment.


The west and the east are still gutting African resources to this day via a bunch of carrots and sticks that rarely include direct bombing by a Western country or China.

Plenty of western mercenary groups supporting traditional land takeover by corporations, funding radical groups to destabilize effective governments forming or growing in strength is still ongoing.


Much of this is often hidden from the public. This argument that people should be somehow punished for actions of others that they are unaware of and have very little power over is insane IMO.


I doubt few are arguing that various Africans should be punished by losing their traditional farming land of many generations because of the iceberg lettuce consuming actions of others they are unaware of.

None the less it continues to happen.


They are not talking about the Africans. They are talking about the British.

Immigration has had many negative effects on social cohesion in the UK. That is just an unfortunate fact. That is obvious if you have lived in poorer areas of some the cities in the UK.

When this subject is normally broached on TV channels such as the BBC. The argument often put forth is that we should accept large amounts of immigration because of the the British Empire and the wars in the Middle-East. It is often framed as if we should accept it as a form of punishment.


Well, I wouldn't say punishment is exactly fair... But your government did not pay for reparations either, while at the same time, your government does hold other countries for doing so in their own wars (validly so).


> Well, I wouldn't say punishment is exactly fair

That is how many of the left talk about it. Some are more coy than others, but nonetheless that is the theme.

I certainly don't care for it and I certainly doesn't endear me to anyone making the argument.

> But your government did not pay for reparations either, while at the same time, your government does hold other countries for doing so in their own wars (validly so).

So? The vast majority of the people in country had nothing to do with those events.


Well... Too bad the government is (supposedly?) democratically elected by its people? Such actions may have consequences.


That unfortunately is a common fallacy that people engage in.

In the first chapter of "Anatomy of the State" this idea is utterly demolished.

> With the rise of democracy, the identification of the State with society has been redoubled, until it is common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every tenet of reason and common sense such as, “we are the government.” The useful collective term “we” has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If “we are the government,” then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also “voluntary” on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that “we owe it to ourselves”; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is “doing it to himself” and, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have “committed suicide,” since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree.


I hear some Brits & immigrants raise that argument and it's the most retarded thing I've ever heard. Can you imagine seeing yourself as a punishment to be inflicted upon someone else?


Apparently, they don't teach history properly in Britain as well! No wonder things aren't going so well.


Charity? I mean, it's an open secret that both sides understand that the bulk of the money sent to African countries isn't supposed to be spent on the people. It's a subsidy/bribe to their developing-world elites to keep them pliable and obedient to basically everything they're told.

It's almost immediately laundered back into London & Paris real estate and Swiss bank accounts.

Wait, you thought Western countries were handing out gibs/NEETbux to African countries just because they feel bad for them?


You are right the majority of people are indeed mislead about where the money is spent.

How are people supposed to get things right when they are constantly misled by both their governments and intuitions?


Oh come on, Africa has been absolutely stripped of all its huge commodity, mineral and material wealth by the west for more than a century.


Africa is not a unique victim. Plenty of parts of the world have had mass enslavement, wars, genocide, pillaging, colonisation and are on their way up.

Even North Korea is more well developed despite being an isolated communist state run by a mafia.


I recommend reading "the Heart of Darkness" about some pristine unbombed idyllic stretches of the Congo river. Written by a totally English person as well, Joseph Conrad.

...

Actually, no, by an immigrant from Poland.


Western politicians and their capitalist economy required colonialism and imperialism. To this day, Westerners can't stay where they are without meddling in the affairs of others, and then they complain about it. But worry not, the economic development of Africa and Asia will soon render Europe and Amerika into very isolated and uninteresting parts of the world.


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You tell that to the People's Republic of China, to Burkina Faso and many others. If you accepted your silly little racial capitalism wasn't completely obsolete and morally bankrupt, maybe there would be hope for you island people.


China, known for its racial harmony and ethical business practices

Tbh I do think we should look to them for how they deal with the Muslims


On one hand, I can understand your frustration at demographic & social changes. Everybody would be offended at that, no matter their race/nationality. On another, I think you're channeling your angst towards the wrong direction.

Over the past 30-80 years, Western countries collected social security contributions from workers but instead of investing/saving them, spent it all like tax. To fund pensions for that now-aged generation, you need fresh, warm bodies to pay taxes.

Sadly, that generation (boomers) had q modest fertility rate. They also live significantly longer than when social security became a norm in the West. 20-30 years more. So you need to tax their kids aggressively for longer to fund pensions & benefits for the boomers. Oh, and since the boomers' kids are having even fewer kids, it's a vicious cycle.

One way to remedy this is to suck in taxpayers from other countries & put them to work paying for the comfort of the boomers until they shuffle off the mortal coil.

So, here are your options:

1. Cut off the boomers and let them starve. But, it's untenable since their votes are a huge bloc and they'd revolt.

2. Expel every single immigrant and tax receipts will plummet. Your indig. young people will pay even more taxes to fund the boomers, unless you revert back to No. 1. Again, not tenable unless you abolish your democracy and establish a dictatorial state.

3. Maintain the current model and let it drag on.

It did not have to be like this. You could have taken Singapore's path of accumulating massive reserves ($2.5 trillion for 6 million people), but you didn't. I hope you figure it out, but I don't think anything drastic will happen.

Just like in Greece, when European lenders told them to impose austerity, leftist parties claimed they'd get into power and maintain all the benefits they'd promised the people. Fuck the globalists.

But, they got into power and realized their finances were well and truly fucked and they had to quietly undergo restructuring despite all their huffing and puffing.

Many immigrants commit crimes, yes, and I believe they need to be repressed. But, many others gratefully work and pay taxes. If you want to expel them, you need to be ready for the options above. Even if you are, many of your countrymen are not.


> So, here are your options:

[...]

2. Expel every single immigrant

3. Maintain the current model

How about another, more nuanced option: let in those immigrants who are willing to work (and, ideally, integrate), and not everybody?

And also, crack down on illegal employment. Maybe being an undeclared, underpaid cook in some EU restaurant is better than being bombed in Syria or shot by some random dictator's goons in Africa, but that doesn't really help the local society if it's unfair competition. If you accept people in, insist that they have papers and can afford to be regular members of society.


That'd be the ideal option. So, why don't the Brits do it? Make sure every immigrant is paying into the system from the moment they step off the plane. If you're not doing that, but instead subsidizing refugees, you can't really be mad at them for accepting free stuff that you willingly give them.

It's a you problem.


I volunteered at a school. Rather than celebrating Christmas or Halloween, they had to celebrate Diwali because Christmas/Halloween might be too offensive or not inclusive enough. The country has gone mad.


1. I don't believe your framing

2. What's wrong with celebrating Diwali?

3. Why should anyone care? Did anyone stop you from celebrating Christmas with your friends and family?

P.s. according to your post history you have based anti capitalist positioning on the pointlessness of most white collar labor, what happened to make you participate on the wrong side in a meaningless culture war that's just a distraction from the reduction in material conditions of the working class?


Well of course you don’t believe me, it goes against your narrative. But I’m sure someone living in Taiwan knows better than someone British currently in the UK.

Also that is quite an overreach on basic observations that are generally agreed upon and weren't anti-capitalist.


I don't believe you because I live in the UK and the idea that people don't celebrate Christmas is beyond moronic. The shops start doing Christmas stuff the day after Halloween. It's unending Christmas songs for two months.

Tell me you seriously didn't notice this.


Shops != schools. Go to a school, they are brainwashing children.

Shops will do whatever makes them profit, they are not strictly run by the government.


Schools are not strictly run by the government either. Learn how schools work before commenting.

A fair number of my family are teachers so check your facts before trying your lazy assertions.


2. What's wrong with celebrating Diwali?

3. Why should anyone care?

Most neoliberals (your entire political class) would vehemently disagree with the idea that the labor market is as high as 30% inefficiency, least of all in white collar jobs. That's not how they believe capitalism works. In their fantasy, pointless jobs can't exist, or at least not at such a high volume, since the invisible hand of the market would eliminate them.

You are of course right and they are wrong but my point is not many would agree with us.


These always come with the assumption that most white-collar jobs weren't already mostly performative busywork.


Blue collar has plenty of performative busywork too


So when will we get AI automating AI development?


That started years ago.

Exactly when depends what you count, but part of the path leading to ChatGPT was getting a bunch of dumb systems to work together to train a smarter system: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.08593 fig 1, and also section 4.4 for what can go wrong


It wasn't a serious comment but my point was about seeing Anthropic/OpenAI replace its own software engineers.


Potential energy vs kinetic energy. Just because it is not in motion doesn't mean the potential is not there, that's why everyone has Amazon Ring in front of their homes and won't let their kids alone in the park. Relying on police to deter crime or relying on police reports to understand the current crime landscape is beyond naive.


Potential crime isn't real crime!

More importantly, you can't deal with potential crime by making real arrests, because then you have to start arresting people who haven't done anything.


A good reminder that certain circles are just the vocal minority and under the surface society is mostly just NPCs.


Not a great lesson to take here.

1. Policy by default will always be planned and implemented by a minority. As well as those who comment to policy, or online.

2. You'll have some 20-30% of people who will say yes to anything if you phrase it the right way.


The thing is most white-collar workers could lose their job today and nothing of value to society would be lost. They were already hired for reasons that aren't related to productivity.


Half the point of school has always been to condition them to behave and think a certain way for adulthood.


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