Have you noticed that ChatGPT has gotten a little personal lately? It’s not just you. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, admitted last night that the last couple of updates to GPT-4o have affected the chatbot’s personality, and not in a good way.
If you use ChatGPT often enough, you might have noticed a shift in its behavior lately. Part of it might be down to its memory, as in my experience, the chatbot addresses you differently when it doesn’t rely on past chats to guide the way you’d (potentially) want it to respond. However, part of it is just that somewhere along the way, OpenAI has made ChatGPT a so-called “yes man” — a tool that agrees with you instead of challenging you, and sometimes, the outcome can be a touch obnoxious.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, seems aware of the change. He referred to the chatbot’s personality as “too sycophant-y” and “annoying,” all the while pointing out that “there are some very good parts of it.” Altman also said that OpenAI is working on fixes as soon as possible, and some might roll out as soon as today, with others to follow later this week.
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), and 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.
This prompted one user to respond, asking whether it’d be possible to go back to the old ChatGPT personality — the one that was polite but not a full-on cheerleader. As an alternative, the user asked whether it’d be possible to distinguish between the “old” and “new” personalities. Altman responded: “Yeah, eventually we clearly need to be able to offer multiple options.” That’d be an interesting and useful addition to ChatGPT.
Fully getting rid of ChatGPT’s friendly, encouraging traits would backfire, too — no matter how annoying they are. While many use ChatGPT for work and research, chatbots have now permeated our reality, resulting in many people chatting with them to discuss their problems or fears. Having just one personality setting is, indeed, very limiting in such situations.
With that said, it’s true that ChatGPT is getting a tad too personal. In two recent conversations, it referred to me as “sweetheart,” and I’m not going to lie, that made me feel really uncomfortable. Let’s hope that OpenAI finds a way to dial it back and make it more of a useful tool than something that tries too hard to be our friend.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.