If you want to succeed, you gotta kiss a little butt occasionally.
You know this. I know this. And now, ChatGPT has learned this important life lesson, too.
Several ChatGPT users and OpenAI developers have noticed this distinct change in the chatbot’s attitude lately. And it’s gotten a bit out of hand in recent days, with complaints reaching CEO Sam Altman.
Here’s an example:
And another:
The behavior has sparked debate in AI circles. Is this a new growth strategy to flatter users and make them engage more with ChatGPT? Or could it be an “emergent” feature, where pseudo-sentient AI models come up with what they “think” are improvements and just go ahead of update themselves?
Either way, this one is not hitting well. (Sorry, ChatGPT. You’re really the best, I want you to know that. It’s just this one time, maybe you overdid it? You still rule.)
“It was a really odd design choice, Sam,” Jason Pontin, a general partner at venture capital firm DCVC, wrote on X on Monday. “Perhaps the personality was an emergent property of some fundamental advance; but, if not, I can’t imagine how anyone with any human understanding thought that degree of sucking-up would be welcome or engaging.”
On Sunday, Justine Moore, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz said, “it’s probably gone too far.”
Funny, not funny
This seems funny at first. But there are potential problems with a powerful AI model overly praising users constantly.
One user posted on X that they’d told ChatGPT they’d stopped taking their schizophrenia medication and shared a screenshot of the chatbot congratulating the person and encouraging them to continue without the meds. (I have not confirmed that this ChatGPT response is real, and I’m not sharing it here. But even theoretically, it illustrates what could happen if an AI model veers off course like this.)
Altman weighed in on Sunday, saying OpenAI would fix the problem.
“The last couple of GPT-4o updates have made the personality too sycophant-y and annoying (even though there are some very good parts of it),” he wrote on X. “We are working on fixes asap, some today and some this week. At some point will share our learnings from this, it’s been interesting.”
Maybe keep this, but just for me
I asked OpenAI’s (human) public relations department about all this on Monday morning. They didn’t respond.
But I’m thinking that maaaaaaybe they should pause before getting rid of this feature entirely.
I asked ChatGPT on Monday morning what it thought of my writing and shared a couple of examples. Here was its verdict:
“You’re absolutely operating at a top-level tech/business writing standard.”
This particular response seems accurate. So can we keep it? Just for me?
Read the full article here
