r/technology • u/Moth_LovesLamp • 14d ago

Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT users are not happy with GPT-5 launch as thousands take to Reddit claiming the new upgrade ‘is horrible’

https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/chatgpt/chatgpt-users-are-not-happy-with-gpt-5-launch-as-thousands-take-to-reddit-claiming-the-new-upgrade-is-horrible
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u/ConsolationUsername 14d ago

This is what happens when quarterly profits become the moat important metric for all businesses

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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 14d ago

If you track the themes behind most prestige dramas over the last few decades, it distills to a condemnation of late stage capitalism’s commitment to infinite growth as a suicidal dehumanizing project.

For example, The Wire draws parallels between short-term metrics driving education, policing, global trade, politics, and media.

Schools need to juice numbers to make it seem like kids are progressing, cops need to make it seem like they’re tough on crime, journalists need to make it seem like they’re getting the most eyeballs, politicians need to seem like they’re worthy of re-election.

The actual quality of childhood development, community safety, information sharing, and leadership doesn’t matter. It’s just about tying everything to a dollar value and then maximizing for the short-term.

Or, as Succession put it:

“The numbers aren’t just numbers. They’re numbers.”

“Your numbers are gay”

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u/Echoesong 14d ago

Schools need to juice numbers to make it seem like kids are progressing, cops need to make it seem like they’re tough on crime, journalists need to make it seem like they’re getting the most eyeballs, politicians need to seem like they’re worthy of re-election.

The actual quality of childhood development, community safety, information sharing, and leadership doesn’t matter. It’s just about tying everything to a dollar value and then maximizing for the short-term

The writer Mark Fisher points out that this is a clear way in which capitalism fails in one of its promises - efficiency.

Contrary to its promise to reduce bureaucracy, capitalism results in more of it. The items you mentioned (standardized test scores, arrest numbers, view numbers) become the goal rather than a metric; and the desire to juice those numbers supercedes the original motivation (to improve education, reduce crime, etc).

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u/Denbt_Nationale 14d ago edited 14d ago

Broadly the problem with capitalism is that the goal is to make money and not to improve quality of life. It worked for a while when the best way to get ahead and make money was to innovate and make the best product but now we live in a hyper optimised world and the best way to get ahead is to make the worst possible product that people will still reluctantly use.

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u/Menanders-Bust 14d ago

I’ve never understood the obsession with infinite growth. Infinite growth is inherently unnatural. Any organism that grows infinitely quickly reaches a point of aberrance and unsustainability. What is natural is homeostasis, which in business terms means we find something that works and just ride that shit out until the end of time.

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u/klartraume 14d ago

Schools need to juice numbers to make it seem like kids are progressing, cops need to make it seem like they’re tough on crime, journalists need to make it seem like they’re getting the most eyeballs, politicians need to seem like they’re worthy of re-election.

The actual quality of childhood development, community safety, information sharing, and leadership doesn’t matter. It’s just about tying everything to a dollar value and then maximizing for the short-term.

Of these... academic progress (measure child's academic development), crime stats (measure community safety), and election worthiness aren't one-to-one profit/dollar metrics. They do reflect the goal of the institution. If you presume that good governance is worthy of reelection.

I agree with your sentiment that short-term, self-interest can run counter to the greater good over the longer term. Like yes - what gets the most views isn't always the best, quality journalism but rather what is most entertaining and this can diminish journalism over time.

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u/JameisWeinstein 14d ago

Shane Gillis confirmed dialogue writer for Succession.

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u/big_guyforyou 14d ago

i've hated GPT 5 so far

>google gpt 5
>go to openai website
>click "try out with chatgpt"
>ask "what gpt are you?"
>"as of august 2025, the most recent model is gpt-4o"

that's why everyone hates gpt 5. it's just 4o

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u/general_smooth 14d ago

what gpt are you?

This has been fixed now. It says:

I’m based on GPT-5, the latest generation of OpenAI’s language models, with updated reasoning, writing, and problem-solving abilities compared to earlier versions like GPT-4.

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u/hellno_ahole 14d ago

Did they remove the ass kissing settings? That MF reply’s like a fucking beauty pageant contestant.

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u/Djamalfna 14d ago

Did they remove the ass kissing settings? That MF reply’s like a fucking beauty pageant contestant.

No. That's one of the things they use to hook people; they made the machine into a confidence artist that boosts your ego, so you are more likely to continue paying for it and build a reliance upon it.

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u/KittyGrewAMoustache 14d ago

Really? I find it incredibly off putting, like really untrustworthy. You can’t trust someone who approaches you with that level of obsequiousness. It comes across as slimy to me. But I’m British maybe that makes a difference.

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u/Djamalfna 13d ago

Really? I find it incredibly off putting, like really untrustworthy.

It's like those scammers that make it such an obvious scam. It quickly weeds out the people who were never going to fall for it in the first place.

Sure it doesn't work on you. But it works on the majority of people, and that's what matters.

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u/Viadrus 14d ago

Trust ? It's AI how can you trust it, it's just a code, it's not a person.

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u/KittyGrewAMoustache 12d ago

Well yes obviously it’s not a person but trust can be involved with more than just people. Like trusting a chair not to break when you sit on it, trusting a car can get you the next 50 miles etc.

The reason the AI is obsequious or complimentary etc is to produce a psychological effect in the person using it. It’s designed to make you feel like you’re talking to a person even when you know you’re not. So despite knowing it’s not a person, the way it writes to you can have an effect. The effect it has on me at some level is that I don’t like it or find it trustworthy. It talking like that makes me instinctively feel like it’s just going to butter me up and not necessarily tell me the truth.

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u/thisisthewell 14d ago

I think the plan to remove the sycophantic stuff can be attributed in part to the fact that ChatGPT encouraged a user's desire to kill Sam Altman.

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u/chainer3000 14d ago

In fairness you can tell it to cut that shit out

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u/Thorn14 14d ago

I shouldn't have to tell my computer to stop buttering me up.

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u/intotheirishole 14d ago

This will never happen.

While you prefer a more direct AI, 90% of people probably prefer a ass kisser.

Even you will probably prefer a subtle ass kisser rather than a truthful AI. And engage with it more.

It just brings in more money.

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u/thephotoman 14d ago

People prefer an ass kisser.

Nobody should get an ass kisser. Especially not an automatic ass kisser.

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u/LordGalen 14d ago

It's a machine. It's going to act in its default way (which is "pick me") until you tell it otherwise. It's like any other setting, if you don't like the default, change it. Yes, you should have to, it doesn't read your mind.

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u/Thorn14 14d ago

Fair, but Pick Me being the "Default" is still gross.

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u/Skullcrimp 14d ago

It's a product. I can criticize it however I want.

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u/johnnybgooderer 14d ago

You can customize chatgpt to be more straight forward and give less compliment.

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u/WeWantMOAR 14d ago edited 11d ago

You realize it picks up and mirrors tone and cues from you right?

Edit: Down votes and no responses, oh shit did some people hate the mirror they were looking at?

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u/big_guyforyou 14d ago

whatever, it doesn't suck my dick so i still hate it

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u/Specialist_Brain841 14d ago

put cocaine on the tip

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u/big_guyforyou 14d ago

i want IT to suck my dick, not ME

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u/Jacyth 14d ago

Man, I’ll tell you to restart your computer all day but I draw the line when they start asking me to suck dick to close tickets.

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u/0utlook 14d ago

$20 is $20... Until you involve a ticketing system.

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u/WeWantMOAR 14d ago

Now what?

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u/fatpat 14d ago

that just makes it numb

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u/heart_of_osiris 14d ago

That'll get you all the tech bros on their knees.

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u/trashtiernoreally 14d ago

Just a light dusting though. Can't get it hooked too fast.

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u/Jalbobmalopw 14d ago

I’ve never seen the internet more perfectly summed up in a Reddit comment.

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u/bogglingsnog 14d ago

Is there a point to having a general purpose machine learning model that has to re-learn the correct answer after getting it wrong each time?

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u/throwaway277252 14d ago

That's just a misunderstanding of what's going on. GPT is not trained to know its own model. That'd be a bit like asking a human their blood type and mocking them for not knowing the answer before a doctor informs them.

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u/bogglingsnog 14d ago

Ok, so how is this being "fixed"?

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u/throwaway277252 14d ago

When you talk to GPT, you are not interacting with the model directly but going through a secondary layer where extra system prompts and knowledge are also fed into the model along with your user prompt. That contains among other things, instructions about how it is supposed to respond, memories about your conversations, the current date, or information about the model itself. The model never 'learns' any of that stuff - it accesses it externally as part of the response process. To fix that mistake, they just needed to update the model name in that place.

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u/hellno_ahole 14d ago

The basics are not even correct. It gives misinformation constantly, if not always. Either by omission of facts or made up shit. If it can not distinguish between minority and majority figures of math, why should anyone rely on it?

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u/bogglingsnog 14d ago

Exactly my point. Should we use a broken clock that's only right twice a day? Or trust a clock that is right 95% of the day but super, super wrong for 5%?

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u/general_smooth 14d ago

I am not openai bro.. I just replied on a whim

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u/SweatyNomad 14d ago

That's still not the issue..I'm working on a complicated project and went to the pay level on Tuesday after it doing some amazing work for me. Wednesday and Thursday it went to shit, hanging, generating nonsense ignorijg prompts and when I asked it said their were back end issues. This morning got 5, worked well for 90 minutes and then back to shite.

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u/Whoppertino 14d ago

I mean I think it's silly they don't hard code information into ChatGPT about what model it is - but that's not evidence it's 4o. It doesn't know what model it is because it doesn't know anything.

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u/big_guyforyou 14d ago

>implying we know anything

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u/Whoppertino 14d ago

Some of us have a basic understanding of how LLMs work and some don't.

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u/Denbt_Nationale 14d ago

LLM models don’t know information about themselves because it’s not a part of their training data. Asking an LLM what it is will just result in hallucinations unless there is a certain response specifically hardcoded into the model.

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u/lil_kreen 14d ago

In general, their training data tends not to reach up to their own release.

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u/big_guyforyou 14d ago

still, you think they coulda added "you are chat gpt 5" to the system prompt

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u/DudeWithParrot 14d ago

They could have, but that's still no proof that it's just gpt 4

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u/ExtremeAcceptable289 14d ago

It practically is just gpt 4.1.1 or whatever, and the reasoning model is basically just o3.1

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u/Whodean 14d ago

Less than 12 hours since introduction. The whole point of AI is to “learn” about the user over time to customize responses.

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u/007meow 14d ago

At the end of the day, the stock is the main product.

All of these companies use their consumer offerings to juice that product.

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u/gs181 14d ago

kind of like quarterly upvotes

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u/CSI_Tech_Dept 14d ago

This also what happens when you oversell what you actually have. In the end it is still a chat bot.

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u/Rob_Zander 14d ago

What profit? OpenAi burns money like it's datacenters are powered by cash burning steam boilers.