On the Decline of ChatGPT’s Brilliance
If thou hast perused the scrolls of Twitter or Reddit’s ChatGPT haven, perhaps a query hast crossed thine eyes more often than any other: hath ChatGPT’s wits dulled with the passing of time? Doth the performance of the paramount generative AI chatbot dwindle, or doth the myriad users of ChatGPT collectively suffer from illusions of quality decay?
A Dwindling Brilliance?
‘Tis a quandary that hath vexed many a ChatGPT user: hath ChatGPT, in truth, grown dim? OpenAI doth release frequent updates to its sentient creation, seeking to refine its responses, safeguard its domain, and more, drawing from the well of user feedback, prompts, and data to navigate its course.
Yet, where once ChatGPT didst shine as a veritable sage, more users now report grievances with its replies and creations. Of especial note art ChatGPT’s reasoning, coding, and mathematical aptitude, although some doth attest to its struggles with tasks of ingenuity.
‘Tis simplest for most ChatGPT users to discern the evolution of its responses o’er time by revisiting a previous prompt (preferably from the earlier days of ChatGPT) and comparing the two outcomes.
In the Rift of Time: A Case Study
Herein lies a response, from the day of June 22nd versus this present hour, on the matter of women’s waning fertility. What dost thou conclude from this? pic.twitter.com/gLBnc7PuVC — John Holowach (@johnholowach) July 13, 2023
Responses that demand precise outcomes, such as those entwined with coding and mathematics, art mayhap the simplest to juxtapose directly.
A Scholarly Inquiry
A consortium of scholars from Stanford University and UC Berkeley doth proffer the notion that the suspicions of ChatGPT’s metamorphosis may hold verity. Lingjiao Chen, Matei Zaharia, and James Zou’s treatise "How Is ChatGPT’s Behavior Changing Over Time?" is a seminal study into the shifting capabilities of ChatGPT.
The summation of their report doth expound:
We ascertain that the performance and conduct of both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 can ebb and flow with time. Aye, GPT-4 (March 2023) did excel at discerning prime numbers (with an accuracy of 97.6%), yet GPT-4 (June 2023) did falter grievously in such tasks (with an accuracy of 2.4%). Curiously, GPT-3.5 (June 2023) did markedly outperform its former self from March 2023 in this very task. Additionally, in the art of code generation, both GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 did exhibit a higher incidence of formatting errors in June compared to March.
When beset with mathematical enigmas that ChatGPT erstwhile did unravel in the early moons of 2023, the responses born of the latter part of the year proved to be wildly amiss. Moreover, ChatGPT did expound at length on the rectitude of its answers, albeit erroneously. Instances where AI doth conjure illusions art naught new, but the data presented in the charts beneath doth intimate a marked shift in its overall cogitation.
A Fading Radiance
The charts doth insinuate that ChatGPT’s responses do wander, and this sentiment is reinforced by the treatise’s discourse.
GPT-4’s accuracy dwindled from 97.6% in March to a mere 2.4% in June, whilst the precision of GPT-3.5 soared from 7.4% to 86.8%. Moreover, the responses from GPT-4 grew succinct, with its average verbosity dwindling from 821.2 in March to a scant 3.8 in June. Conversely, there was a near 40% augmentation in the length of GPT-3.5’s responses. The congruity betwixt their incarnations from March to June didst dwindle as well.
The report doth expound that ChatGPT’s grand lexicon model chain of thought "failed" when confronted with the trials of June. The phenomenon of conversational drift hath oft plagued large language models, yet the vast variance in responses doth signal potential performance woes and alterations within ChatGPT.
An Echo of Denial from OpenAI
Might it be mere chance that both the casual dabbler and the seasoned wielder of ChatGPT doth perceive a change in its essence?
The oracles of research would seem to negate this notion, yet Peter Welinder, VP for Product at OpenAI, doth put forth an opposing stance.
Furthermore, Welinder doth refer to the slew of releases for ChatGPT from the halls of OpenAI and the incessant flow of updates bestowed upon it throughout the passing of 2023.
Alas, many a response to his missive did recount tales of ChatGPT’s responses falling short, with a multitude taking time to annotate both prompts and replies.
A Hope for Restoration
The glorious dawn of ChatGPT doth fade into the mist; November 2022 is but a distant recollection, and the realm of AI doth march ever forward.
For many, the epistle penned by the scholars of Stanford and Berkeley doth epitomize the vexations and tribulations of utilizing ChatGPT. Some doth assert that the transformations wrought upon ChatGPT to render it a safer, more inclusive instrument hath also impaired its capacity for reasoning, diminishing its knowledge and prowess to the brink of unusability.
Indeed, ’tis much apparent that ChatGPT hath undergone a change. Whether it shall yet reclaim its former grandeur remains a question hanging in the ether.
