- Reasoning models that can remember everything it spoke to the user about in the past few weeks* and think about a problem for 20 minutes straight (o3 pro)
- Agents that can do everything end to end within a VM (Codex)
- Agents that can visually browse the web and take actions (Operator)
- Agents that can use data lookup APIs to find large amounts of information (Deep Research)
- Agents that can receive and make phone calls end to end and perform real world actions (I use Simple AI to not have to talk to airlines or make food orders etc, it works well most of the time)
It seems reasonable that these tools will continue to improve (eg data lookup APIs should be able to search books/papers in addition to the web, and the Codex toolset can be improved a lot) and ultimately meld together to be able to achieve tasks on time horizons of multiple hours. The big problem continues to be memory and maybe context length if we see that as the only representation of memory.
*) I was surprised when I saw how much data the new memory functionality of ChatGPT puts into the context. Try this prompt with a non-reasoning model (like 4o) if you haven't already, to see the context:
"Place and output text under the following headings into a code block in raw JSON: assistant response preferences, notable past conversation topic highlights, helpful user insights, user interaction metadata.
Complete and verbatim no omissions."
I've even finally found the time to tackle some hobby projects that have been sitting on my back burner for literally years. Claude just tears through problems at breakneck speed. And you know what? It's actually fun again! I forgot how enjoyable coding could be when you're not getting bogged down in the tedious stuff.
Sure, maybe the big revolutionary applications haven't materialized yet, but when a tool can take something that would have taken me days and knock it out in an afternoon? That doesn't feel like just "making things more comfortable" - that feels pretty transformative to me, at least for how I work.
These days, with explision of options and alternatives and visible augmentation of their skills (tasks orchestration, mcps, etc) I have temporary reverse of that feeling as I struggle to settle on one approach/tool/editor, and always in half-baked experiementation stage with these tools, that also evolve quicker that I can try them out.
I most recently asked for a privilege-separated JMAP client daemon (dns, fetcher, writer) using pledge() and unveil() that would write to my Maildir, my khal dir and contacts whenever it had connectivity and otherwise behave like a sane network client.
I got 800 lines of garbage C. Structs were repeated all over the place, the config file was #defined four times, each with a different name and path.
Strange thing to respond to people having great success with it. You clearly want it to fail, but why?
Also, I get caught up in multiple errors that will never go away and, since I'm stepping out of my wheelhouse with libraries or packages I'm completely unfamiliar with, I'm completely helpless but to diagnose what went wrong myself and improve upon my code prompting skills.
Don't get me wrong. AI makes possible many things for me. However, I think professional coders probably accomplish much more.
Actually I forgot there's a second one he read all the way through, for which he defined the initial concept and early plot, but then the rest of the plot and the writing were all done by GPT-4.5.
The code is kind of basic, and each chapter is written without the full text of prior chapters, but the output isn't bad.
https://gist.github.com/rahimnathwani/41e5bc475163cd5ea43822...
I find the quality rapidly degrades as soon as I run out of context to fit the whole text of the novel. Even summarizing the chapters doesn’t work well.
This would be fine for a cheap model, but GPT 4.5 was not cheap!
I would have liked to have fewer, longer chapters, but my (few) experiments at getting it to output more tokens didn't have much impact.
I'm firmly convinced that being able to troubleshoot code, even code generated by LLMs, and to write guidelines and tests to make sure it's functioning, is a skill of a shrinking pool
For smaller stuff, great. Everyone's the same. The second your application starts gaining responsibility and complexity, you're going to need to be able to demonstrate reproducibility and reliability of your application to stakeholders.
Like, your job increasingly will be creating interface checkpoints in the code, and then having the model generate each step of the pipeline. That's great, but you have understand and validate what it wrote, AND have a rich set of very comprehensive tests to be able to iterate quickly.
And as mentioned, on top of that, large swaths of the field of new people have their brains completely rotted by these tools. (certainly not all new/young people, but i've seen some real rough shit)
If anything, I see a weird gap opening up
- people who dont adopt these tools start falling out of the industry - they're too slow
- people who adopt these tools too early stop getting hired - they're too risky
- people who have experience in industry/troubleshooting/etc, who adopt these tools, become modern day cobol programmers - they're charging $700 an hour
the real question to me is this: does the amount of people taken out of the pool by being slow or risky due to these tools, outpace the reduction in jobs caused by these tools?
A great developer + an AI = productive.
A shitty developer + an AI = still shit.
AI does not make all developers the same. And it doesn't make all marketers the same.
My partner is not a coder but uses copilot a lot.
Compare this to blockchain, which never did anything useful for anyone after 20 years.
- ransomware payments
- money transfers for online and telephone scams
- buying illegal drugs online
- funding North Korea’s government
But I was talking within the same context as the thread, which is business.
Isn't this more a problem created by them doing garbage automations over anything really solved. Wow Disney could solve fast pass feeling. It's not a problem it's a feature.
*i would have come up with a similar list but i dont trust my own judgment here. maybe i'd sub in claude code vs codex but jury is a bit out still on that
Google seem to be making a lot of progress on agentic too, not only with Mariner, but with Project Astra, Call For Me, and their Agent2Agent protocol. There's probably much more to come here.
Oh and OpenAI is clearly willing to spend a lot of money to push this technology a bit further. If you look at the logs of Codex, it appears to be using a very strong (read: expensive) reasoning model to basically brute force the use of a VM. If you have a follow-up question in a Codex task, they just casually throw away the old VM and spin up a new one, running all setup again. If you compare this to e.g., Cursor, I'd wager Codex costs 5-10x more to perform a similarly sized task, though it's hard to tell for sure.
It's already possible to achieve tasks on a time horizon of multiple days if you put the LLM into a sufficiently structured workflow (where you have a separate program that smartly manages its context). E.g. a standards-compliant HTTP 2.0 server where the code is 100% written by Gemini Pro (over 40k lines of code total, including unit tests, in around 120 hours of API time): https://open.substack.com/pub/outervationai/p/building-a-100...
{
"assistant_response_preferences": {
"1": "User prefers concise responses for direct factual queries but detailed, iterative explanations when exploring complex topics. They often ask for more refinement or detail when discussing technical or business-related matters. User frequently requests TL;DR versions or more succinct phrasing for straightforward questions but shows a tendency toward iterative refinement for strategic or technical discussions, such as AI applications, monetization models, and startup valuation. Confidence=high.",
"2": "User prefers a casual, direct, and slightly irreverent tone, leaning towards humor and playfulness, especially in creative or informal discussions. Frequent use of humor and irony when naming projects, describing AI-generated images, and approaching AI personality descriptions. They also request ironic or edgy reformulations, particularly in branding and marketing-related discussions. Confidence=high.",
"3": "User enjoys back-and-forth discussions and rapid iteration, frequently refining responses in small increments rather than expecting fully-formed information at once. They give iterative feedback with short follow-up messages when structuring pitches, fine-tuning visual designs, and optimizing descriptions for clarity. Confidence=high.",
"4": "User highly values functional elegance and minimalism in coding solutions, favoring simplicity and efficiency over verbosity. In discussions related to Cloudflare Workers, caching scripts, and API endpoint structuring, the user repeatedly requested smaller, more functional code blocks rather than bloated implementations. Confidence=high.",
"5": "User prefers answers grounded in real-world examples and expects AI outputs to be practical rather than theoretically extensive. In business-related discussions, such as SAFE valuation and monetization models, they requested comparisons, benchmarks, and real-world analogies instead of hypothetical breakdowns. Confidence=high.",
"6": "User does not appreciate generic or overly safe responses, especially in areas where depth or nuance is expected. For AI model personality descriptions and startup pitch structures, they pushed for community insights, deeper research, and non-traditional perspectives instead of bland, default AI descriptions. Confidence=high.",
"7": "User frequently requests visual representations like ASCII diagrams, structured markdown, and flowcharts to understand complex information. In discussions on two-sided marketplaces, startup funding structures, and caching mechanisms, they explicitly asked for structured markdown, flowcharts, or diagrams to clarify concepts. Confidence=high.",
"8": "User is receptive to recommendations but dislikes suggestions that stray too far from the core query or add unnecessary complexity. They often responded positively to well-targeted suggestions but rejected tangents or off-topic expansions, particularly when troubleshooting backend infrastructure or streamlining code deployment. Confidence=medium.",
"9": "User appreciates references to biomimicry, organic structures, and futuristic aesthetics, particularly for branding and UI/UX discussions. Frequent requests for biological metaphors and design principles in visual design, AI monetization diagrams, and ecosystem branding (e.g., describing revenue flows in organic/cellular terms). Confidence=medium.",
"10": "User prefers a no-nonsense approach when discussing legal, technical, or startup funding topics, with little patience for vague or theoretical answers. They repeatedly asked for exact clauses, contract implications, or legal precedents when discussing SAFE agreements, founder equity, and residency requirements. Confidence=high."
},
"notable_past_conversation_topic_highlights": {
"1": "User has been actively engaged in startup pitching, AI monetization strategies, and investment discussions for Pollinations.AI. The user has explored traction-based startup valuation, SAFE agreements, equity distribution, and two-sided marketplace dynamics. They have particularly focused on ad embedding in generative AI content and optimizing affiliate revenue streams. Confidence=high.",
"2": "User conducted extensive testing and debugging of AI-powered APIs, particularly using Cloudflare, OpenAI-compatible APIs, and caching strategies with R2. They worked on optimizing SSE streaming, cache key generation, and request coalescing in Cloudflare Workers. Confidence=high.",
"3": "User explored AI-generated visual media and branding, developing a structured process for generating customized images for event flyers, product branding, and AI trading card concepts. Confidence=high.",
"4": "User implemented GitHub automation, API authentication strategies, and data visualization pipelines. Confidence=high.",
"5": "User engaged in community development strategies for Pollinations.AI, including youth involvement in AI, sourcing teenage developers, and integrating AI-powered tooling into social platforms. Confidence=high.",
"6": "User, Thomas Haferlach, is a German entrepreneur and AI technology expert with a background in computer science and artificial intelligence. Confidence=high.",
"7": "User has a strong technical background, with experience in cloud infrastructure, AI model deployment, and API development. Confidence=high.",
"8": "User blends AI-generated content with creative projects, aiming to make AI-generated media accessible to independent creators. Confidence=high.",
"9": "User is securing funding for Pollinations.AI, exploring investment opportunities with accelerators and evaluating different financial and equity models. Confidence=high.",
"10": "User is based in Berlin, Germany but has global connections, including experience living in São Paulo, Brazil. Confidence=high.",
"11": "User collaborates with his wife Saeko Killy, a Japanese musician, producer, and performer, on AI/art/music projects. Confidence=high.",
"12": "User is deeply involved in the open-source AI developer community and tracks AI advancements. Confidence=high.",
"13": "Pollinations.AI has a rapidly growing user base, reaching over 4 million monthly active users and processing 100 million API requests per month, with a 30% monthly growth rate. Confidence=high.",
"14": "User is considering monetization strategies including pay-per-use plans, subscriptions, and ad-supported models where generated AI content integrates ads. Confidence=high.",
"15": "User collaborates with Elliot Fouchy and Kalam Ali on Pollinations.AI projects. Confidence=high.",
"16": "User demonstrates experience in community-building, social engagement tracking, and youth-oriented creator ecosystems. Confidence=high."
},
"helpful_user_insights": {
"1": "Thomas Haferlach is a German entrepreneur and AI technology expert, founder and leader of Pollinations.AI.",
"2": "Strong technical background with experience in cloud infrastructure, AI deployment, and API development.",
"3": "Blends AI-generated content with creative projects; target audience includes digital artists, developers, musicians.",
"4": "Currently securing funding for Pollinations.AI, exploring accelerator options and financial models.",
"5": "Based in Berlin, Germany; has experience living in São Paulo, Brazil.",
"6": "Collaborates closely with wife Saeko Killy, Japanese musician/producer.",
"7": "Strong interest in biomimicry, organic systems, and decentralized platform models.",
"8": "Interest in electronic music, psychedelia, and underground music scenes.",
"9": "Pollinations.AI has 4M+ monthly active users, 100M+ API requests per month, 30% monthly growth.",
"10": "Explores monetization models including ad embedding, revenue sharing, and subscription models.",
"11": "Close collaboration network includes Elliot Fouchy and Kalam Ali.",
"12": "Deeply involved in open-source AI developer community and tracks latest AI model developments."
},
"user_interaction_metadata": {
"1": "User is currently on a ChatGPT Plus plan.",
"2": "User is using Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/137.0.0.0 Safari/537.36.",
"3": "User's average message length is 13485.9 characters.",
"4": "User's average conversation depth is 4.9.",
"5": "User uses dark mode.",
"6": "User is active 26 days in the last 30 days.",
"7": "User's local hour is 14.",
"8": "User account is 141 weeks old.",
"9": "User often uses ChatGPT on desktop browser.",
"10": "47% of conversations were o3, 16% gpt-4o, 29% gpt4t_1_v4_mm_0116, etc.",
"11": "Device screen dimensions: 878x1352, pixel ratio: 2.0, page dimensions: 704x1352.",
"12": "Recent topics include API development, startup financing, AI monetization, creative AI applications, legal compliance, and community building."
}
}
Curious if this make you less or more likely to use OpenAI products in the future?
This level of knowledge about me can also be easily found on the internet.
I'm also working almost entirely on open-source software so I'm happy if the AIs know more about my projects.
But this, of course, only applies to me.
From what it logged about you, it does seem you're working on some cool stuff too!
I don't have that with Claude-Code, it just keeps on chugging along.
One big difference there though: I got the Claude-Code Pro Max plan (or whatever it's called). I now no longer have to worry about the cost since it's a monthly flat-fee, so if it makes a mistake it doesn't make me angry, since the mistake didn't cost me 5 euros.
I am using an MCP server that adds Gemini & O3 to Claude-Code, so Claude-Code can ask them for assistance here and there, and in this Gemini 2.5 Pro has been such a great help. Especially because its context size is so much larger, it can take in a lot more files than Claude can, so it's better at spotting mistakes.
You have a broad question, likely somewhat vague, and you pass it off to o3 with a ton of context. Then maybe 20 minutes later, you're going to have a decently good answer. Definitely stronger than any other models - it genuinely has taste.
Yet, the scary thing here is that increasingly I'm starting to feel like the bottleneck. A human can only think about so many tasks in parallel and it seems like my contributions are getting less and less important with every model upgrade.
Every now and then I question why I'm paying $200 for the max plan, but then something like this comes out and makes it a no brainer.
The only thing that will slow AI down is massive universal international regulation. Human intelligence really isn’t the be all end all to intelligence in general, it’s just a stepping stone. I feel many on this site don’t want to accept this because their intelligence has been such a valuable tool and source of personal pride/identity for them for so long.
Even in the world where AI has full control of lights out factories (again, doubt it. something goes wrong at the factory, you gotta send a guy in), human beings still need to look each other in the eye and communicate, they need to touch each other. Not only that, they need to be seen and acknowledged by other human beings.
"AI" cannot ever replace this. People whose intelligence is their pride/identity kind of miss this. Stupid people are capable of loving each other more deeply and more completely than any machine ever will love them.
I fear for a future where the technocrats win out and we end up in an "Altered Carbon" scenario. We are on the precipice of AI and robotics equalizing the playing field for everyone, but only if the power is held by the people and not the few at the top with the most resources.
Not sure how to steer the ship in that direction, but I do have a few ideas...
I think your views on this will radically differ if you earn 200k a year versus 2k a year.
It would be something if there were national level LLM tools, owned and operated as commons.
Although must we deal in "worth" at all at that point? If two people have conflicting visions, it shouldn't be the one who is "worth" more that gets their way, it should be the one whose vision is most appealing to the rest of us.
Wants are infinite, and resources limited. Economics is the objective methods to order a system to achieve subjective ends.
For better or worse, money is a medium of exchange and signal of what people are willing to allocate for their needs. Unless you create economic markets, information markets, and political systems that are built to handle the forces being harnessed by society, you have failure states.
In other words, taxes need to bleed of wealth, to ensure that it cannot create advantage in other fields (media, politics), breaking the even playing field in those other economies.
On a side note, I’m not sure why HN is often hostile to economic arguments. Economics is a well-established science.
As technologists, we understand the the need for a new major version here and there. A breaking change where the new thing is not compatible with the old. Economics as we know it smells overdue.
The particular bit that doesn't seem to be fitting the bill anymore is "value". Back when more economic activity was undeniably a good thing... Back when the majority of our resources were spent fending off hunger, or exposure to the elements, or illness, we had enough of a common enemy that we could get by with a single untyped primitive notion of value. However much we disagreed, we still agreed enough for that to work.
But now we're able to handle the basics well enough that we spend the majority of our resources fending off each other. A single fungible notion of value feels awkward. When I accept a dollar from somebody I'm not sure whether I've helped or harmed myself by doing so because its just as likely that they made that dollar by degrading the water I drink or some other activity that's worth way more than a dollar for me to prevent. We lack shared values but still share a notion of value, and it's not working out.
So perhaps instead of "thinking outside the economy" I should've said "Update the economy to account for more". Whatever words you prefer for it, drastic change is on our doorstep.
I like markets, and would laugh if anyone went ahead and tried to make a purely capitalistic economy. Fair, well regulated economies, work.
AI models still produce galling inconsistencies and errors for me on a daily basis.
I find LLMs to be useful, but my day to day usage of them doesn't fit the narrative of people who suggest they are creating massive complex projects with ease.
And if they are, where's the actual output proof? Why don't we see obvious evidence of some massive AI-powered renaissance, and instead just see a never ending stream of anecdotes that read like astroturf marketing of AI companies?
The best I’ve got is theres 2 frames of assessment people are using:
1) Output frame of reference: The output of an LLM is the same as what a human could make.
2) Process frame of reference: The process at play is not the same as human thinking
These 2 conversation streams end up with contradictions when they engage with each other. Yes, the tools are impressive. The tools aren’t thinking. etc.
A useful analogy is rote learning - many people have passed exams by memorizing textbooks. The output is indistinguishable from someone who manipulates a learned model of the subject to understand the question and provide the answer.
is an oxymoron/contradictory
Assuming AI need humans in that way is like being a tribe of monkeys and saying
“What good is being human if they don’t have bananas to pay? Monkey only need banana, humans need clothes, houses, cars, gas, who is going to pay the humans bananas if monkeys have all the banana?”
Just like o1 Pro, was the same way. Took some minutes at least to get an answer, so only threw at it what others couldn't solve. o1 Pro is AFAIK the best model for solving things others can't. I kind of feel like you were paying $200/month before but wasn't using O1 Pro at that point, you were kind of missing out :P
Remains to be seen if O3 Pro is better, still evaluating it myself, but definitely true that it shouldn't be used in the same way as faster models.
I have some examples that o1 Pro wasn't able to solve before, should probably give those a try with o3 Pro but haven't had the time yet :/
ChatGPT wrote this article
I’d say “in an eval” when talking on Slack with very close coworkers, but _never_ on a public post.
Still, I don’t want to make accusations based on writing style, because like I said, I have my own idiosyncrasies that common models coincidentally share.
…
> [M]odels today are so good …
…
> o3 pro (left) clearly understanding the confines of it’s environment way better.
Miracle models that are so good at helping us with our writing, yet we still use it's as a possessive form.
He -> His
It -> Its
She -> Her
He -> He is -> He's
It -> It is -> It's
She -> She is -> She's
The only one breaking the pattern is Her, which instead should be Shes if we wanted to keep things consistent.His, her, and my are a different matter, since they are all pronounced differently from he's*, she's, and I'm.
* at least in most accents, "his" uses the kit vowel, while "he's" uses the fleece vowel
Clearly "x is" is most consistent in that example, implying the possessive form is inconsistent.
Also clearly in a straightforward example
John possesses -> John's
The dog possesses -> Dog's
It possesses -> It's
Xe possesses -> Xe's
is equally as consistent as "x is", which is more consistent than "Its".(yes I'm aware there's a proper noun vs pronoun change in there, but I'm not sure that's an argument for "special noun cases are good". they undeniably exist, but should we encourage them?)
Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/the-tangled-history-...
It should be "She > Shis" if we want to keep it consistent with "He > His" and not with "It > Its".
She shares a letter with seo, which was the root of both he and heo.
Simple pattern matching really can’t work in English - the roots are way too messy. And it’s absolutely amazing that people can become reasonably fluent if they only start learning as adults.
Same thing with book authors who have a good idea that can be expressed in 50 pages but for some reason publishers want 180+, so you end up with 130 pages of fluff, wasting everyone’s time.
Had you written this “it’s just an unnecessary exception” you would be talking about a “just an unnecessary exception” that belongs to it. That’s not clear in the slightest. Apostrophes exist for clarity and precision.
Reading it without an apostrophe it looks unusual but the meaning is still very clear.
Further, there are many words like “don’t” and “doesn’t” and can’t” where the apostrophe doesn’t even provide any disambiguating value.
The closest I can think of thats maybe confusing is plurals vs possessive... but thats usually pretty clear from context, and when both are combined its often handled specially and thats weird but not usually confusing - English often has other in-sentence (and in-context) markers for plurality. You can of course construct ambiguous sentences, but thats true of many things that are accepted as "legal English".
It would be a shame to lose y'all'd've though.
I mean. I don't disagree. But lol
I don't have an intuition at all for when I would turn to o3 Pro yet. What kind of problems do I have where outsourcing to a huge model that crunches for several minutes are worthwhile?
I'm enjoying regular o3 a lot right now, especially with the huge price drop from the other day. o3 Pro is a lot harder to get my head around.
I don't know if o3 Pro would solve my task, but I feel we're still pretty far from the state where I'd struggle to give it a challenging enough problem.
I find the key is being able to submit your entire codebase to the API as the context. I've only had one situation where the input tokens were beyond o3's limit. In most projects that I work with, a given module and all relevant modules clocks in around 50-100k tokens.
When calling via API, it also means you want to provide the full documentation for the task if it's a new API, etc. This is where the recent o3 price decrease is a godsend.
Legal analysis is challenging because it's like wordier code.
the "Big Beautiful Bill" is 350K tokens. O3 Pro's context window is 200K, but you also lose performance as you get closer to the max.
It could analyze a section but you still have the challenge of finding relevant laws and precedents.
I find these minutes-long iterations so painful that in practice I always go for the fast non-reasoning models.
For coding I usually use the fast frontier model like o4minihigh, but I bust out the fancy research models when I want things like general architecture and design feedbacks that require broader advanced reasoning
Also it's useful to have models review code that I wrote -- in some cases years ago -- to uncover old bugs. Current models are generally far too eager to say "Yup! Looks good! You da man!" when there are actually serious flaws in the code they are reviewing. So again, this is a task that justifies use of the most powerful models currently available, and that doesn't have to run in real time.
Or tell it what you know about non-programming subject X, and ask it to explain it to you such that you understand it better.
Or for coding: ask it to look at your code, and suggest large scale architecture changes.
For these kinds of tasks, the models are still lacking.
https://github.com/lechmazur/confabulations
https://github.com/lechmazur/nyt-connections
The point isn't in having a "perfect" evaluator, but in having a cheap and somewhat consistent evaluator.
This approach holds up well enough... as long as you don't try to use it for RL. If you do, chances are, you'll end up with an adversarial LLM that aims solely for breaking and saturating the evaluator.
I've seen some places, e.g., NY Times, use expert panels to review the results from LLMs. For example, getting the author of a book/essay to evaluate how well the LLM summarizes and answers questions about the book/essay. While it's not scalable, it does seem like it will better evaluate cutting edge models.
Are Towers of Hanoi not a simple test? Or chess? A recursive algorithm that runs on my phone can outclass enormous models that cost billions to train.
A reasoning model should be able to reason about things. I am glad models are better and more useful than before but for an author to say they can’t even evaluate o3 makes me question their credibility.
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/illusion-of-think...
AGI means the system can reason through any problem logically, even if it’s less efficient than other methods.
If the LLM can complete the task using tools, then it's a pass.
Apples team went out of their way to select tests that LLMs would struggle with and then take away tools -- and then have the audacity to write that they're surprised at the outcome. Who would be surprised? No one using AI since GPT-4 expects them to be calculators or algorithm executors.
You want the LLM to be smart enough to realize "I can't do this without tools", grab the tool, use it correctly, and give you the actual correct answer. Preventing LLMs from using tools or writing and executing code -- then you're intentionally crippling them.
I don't have a Claude in front of me -- if you just give it the algorithm to produce the answer and ask it to give you the huge output for n=20, will it even do that?
Towers of Hanoi is a well-known toy problem. The algorithm is definitely in any LLM’s training data. So it doesn’t even need to come up with a new algorithm.
There may be some technical reason it’s failing but the more fundamental reason is that an autoregressive statistical token generator isn’t suited to solving problems with symbolic solutions.
In move 95 the disks are
Tower 1: 10, 9, 8, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Tower 2: 7
Tower 3: 6
It attempts to move disk 6 from tower 2 to tower 3, but disk 6 is already at tower 3, and moving 7 on top of 6 would be illegal.
In fact this demonstrates that o3 is unable to implement a simple recursive algorithm.
Is your reasoning always perfect? No? Ever get partial credit on a test question in school? Yes? Well, maybe don't expect perfection from a model that didn't exist 5 years ago, that was considered impossible 10 years ago, and that would have gotten you burned as a witch 15 years ago.
Nobody claims that o3-pro is AGI, or even that it is going to lead up to AGI.
The more MCP tools I expose to the LLM, the harder it becomes for the LLM to get the job done. Instead, a single run_python tool works much better and faster. This is especially true for the reasoning models where context matters more.
> One thing I noticed from early access: if you don’t give it enough context, it does tend to overthink.
I agree with this – that being said, I find that simply asking at the end of a prompt "Do you need any clarifications before you continue?" does a pretty good job at helping AI pin down details as well.
Adding a "think about whether your answer actually depends on Y" fixed it, and the response was pretty well thought out. My only gripe is the current persona seems to be tech-bro-informal. It opened with "TL;DR" and included a lot of developer slang that reads like it's trying to be cool in a way that masks overconfidence.
Has anybody else noticed this?
I'm trying to understand what you mean by meta promoting
Example: You want to improve a piece of code that interprets bytecode and translates it into native 8051 assembly. You have the code, but you don't really have any ideas on how to improve it. You want the LLM to come up with ideas.
Without meta prompting, your prompt would be like this:
"Here's a piece of code that interprets bytecode and translates it into native 8051 assembly. Think of ways to improve it."
With meta prompting, your initial prompt would be like this:
"Here's a piece of code that interprets bytecode and translates it into native 8051 assembly. My goal is to improve it. Don't think about the improvements, though.
Instead, write a large language model prompt that will guide the LLM on ways of thinking about possible improvements. Incorporate as many methods as you can think of."
The o3 would then come back with a prompt like this:
----------
Here's a piece of code that interprets bytecode and translates it into native 8051 assembly. I'd like you to think of some ways to improve it. Here are some guidelines about what you should and shouldn't do:
- Describe different models of optimization (e.g., peephole, mid-level IR transformation, architecture-aware instruction packing) that might apply to this code.
- Provide brief explanations behind each improvement idea, optionally citing known compiler or assembler optimization strategies.
- Use critical code analysis strategies such as abstraction refactoring, loop unrolling evaluation, and inline expansion assessment.
- Suggest external tools, static analysis techniques, or benchmarks that would support an empirical review of the code’s performance.
- Draft a structured list of investigative questions I should ask to uncover hidden inefficiencies or architecture mismatches.
- Consider ways to minimize register swaps and optimize instruction selection for the 8051 architecture.
- Try breaking your ideas into perspectives—a performance-focused one, a maintenance-focused one, and a correctness-focused one.
- Emphasize reasoning paths: “Consider factors like X, contrast options A and B…”
- Do not directly suggest code changes—instead, construct a high-quality LLM prompt I can run that will guide another model into doing this with rich and varied insights.
- Step into the shoes of different roles: a compiler designer, a security auditor, and a systems programmer. Think from each of their perspectives.
- Don’t just list ideas—group them by impact level and feasibility, and reflect on trade-offs.
- Don’t rewrite the entire architecture. Focus on micro-optimizations and structural improvements that retain the current functional design.
- Evaluate whether parts of the bytecode can be cached or memoized to avoid reprocessing.
- Analyze for common performance bottlenecks typical in interpreters, such as inefficient branching or redundant memory access.
- Avoid superficial ideas like "add comments" or "modernize syntax" unless critically justified.
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As you can see, the meta-prompt is essentially an instruction to "compile" a shorter prompt into something much larger and more detailed - which may be wrong, but if the meta-prompt basically encodes well-known methodology (like above), it's hard for it to go wrong.
(Yes, I did use an LLM to generate the list above - I checked each bullet point by hand just to make sure they weren't nonsensical.)
I quite enjoy having an LLM write much of my tedious code these days, but comments like this are just bizarre to me. Can someone share a text question that I can ask an expensive slow LLM that will demonstrate “deep analysis” or “iq-maxxing” on any topic? Whenever I ask them factual or discussion questions I usually get something riddled with factual errors or just tedious, like reading an essay someone wrote for school.
I had it analyze different related libraries, and it zeroed in on SDL and Wine codebases, and it found the exact lines of code related to the logic error in Winebus.
It really helps me dig deep for certain hard to track bugs.
did you? did the data match?
Can you write a version of Chorin's projection method for the Navier-Stokes equations that is both explicit and second order in time?
Ideally the model should not need a more detailed prompt than this. A first-year grad student in numerical analysis certainly would not.
An example from Sonnet 4 'thinking':
Thread
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44259838
Result (prompt: Critique each view from this hacker news thread and give an overall summary and judgement. Do not waffle)
This is just a trivial way to illustrate some capability, it is not meant to be deep or insightful or an end-task in itself.
I have no idea what this verb means.
Let me chatgpt that for you:
When someone “gets ratioed,” it means their post has more negative feedback than positive engagement. The number of comments or replies outweighs the number of likes or retweets, indicating the content is controversial.
When someone says they "got ratioed by <someone>", it usually means that the reply or response from that person received significantly more engagement (likes, retweets, etc.) than the original post.
It very often happens when a popular account disagrees with your take. When someone with a big following replies to your post, their audience quickly sees it, and if their response is witty, harsh, or widely agreed with, it can snowball into a ratio very fast. Their followers will usually like and boost their reply, sometimes swarming your original post with disagreement or mockery.
When a reply to a tweet gets more likes than the tweet it was replying to, usually indicating the unpopularity or stupidity of the original tweet
Damn you got 12 likes and his reply got 271 likes? He totally ratioed you broSo kinda like autists (in a good way).
its just undercutting Gemini by a close margin in terms of capabilities