https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/07/is-chatgpt-getting-dumber.htmlDevoted users of ChatGPT, the chatbot that has become the mainstream face of consumer AI, have spent the past couple of months trying to solve a frustrating mystery: Is their trusty AI companion — their all-purpose assistant, their accomplice in cheating, their secret co-worker, their patient tutor — becoming less … intelligent?
In May, on Hacker News, worried ChatGPT devotees shared their hunches. “The responses feel a little cagier at times than they used to,” wrote one. “I assume it’s trying to limit hallucinations in order to increase public trust in the technology.” Another user agreed: “To me, it feels like it’s started giving superficial responses and encouraging follow-up elsewhere.” Others were more confident in a change. “There’s no doubt that it’s gotten a lot worse on coding,” one wrote. Peter Yang, a product lead at Roblox, lent his credibility to the conspiracy:
By July, the theory had gained steam as a post titled “I use chatGPT for hours every day and can say 100% it’s been nerfed over the last month or so” shot to the top of the ChatGPT sub-Reddit, garnering thousands of concurring replies. “It’s definitely gotten dumber,” wrote one person who uses ChatGPT to code. “It was amazing how intricate and novel it would write things. Now, it feels very cookie-cutter,” wrote another. Users shared examples of tasks that ChatGPT formerly handled well that it struggled with today and offered theories as to what was happening.
Is OpenAI optimizing for performance and trying to lower cost? Are its attempts to “align” the product — or, in another interpretation, to censor its output — interfering with its performance? Was ChatGPT, the fastest-growing online service in history, just speedrunning the process of corporate “en░░░░tification?”
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