Comment by thfuran
1 day ago
It (and the rest of the blather in responses) is one of the two biggest factors keeping me from using ChatGPT more. But I assume they have numbers showing that people for some reason want it.
1 day ago
It (and the rest of the blather in responses) is one of the two biggest factors keeping me from using ChatGPT more. But I assume they have numbers showing that people for some reason want it.
I've had custom instructions for ChatGPT for a couple years now to respond in as short and straightforward a way as possible (including quite a few more guidelines, like no exclamation points etc.). I recommend setting up something like that, it helps a lot to avoid blathering and sycophancy.
I version my custom instructions for ChatGPT in a private repo, it's currently over 200 words long.
At first, I was concerned for how it'd affect performance by polluting the context window with such a long prefix. Then when one of the model's ChatGPT system prompts was leaked, and I saw it was huge by comparison. So I figured it's probably okay.
Highly encourage people to take advantage of this feature. Ask it to not do the things that annoy you about its "personality" or writing style.
I don't even think it's necessarily intentional. The idea of a 'yes man' being successful is very common for humans, and the supply is artificially constrained by the fact that it feels bad to be a sycophant. When you have a bunch of people tuning a model, its no surprise to me that the variants who frequently compliment and agree with the tester float to the top.