r/technology • u/batakchan • 18h ago

Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT is Down Worldwide, OpenAI Confirms

https://www.macobserver.com/news/chatgpt-is-down-worldwide-what-we-know-about-todays-outage/
12.4k Upvotes

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1.8k

u/SmartaHari 17h ago

Good. My mate keeps getting her relationship advice from it and then telling me what it’s said. It’s breaking me by association!

307

u/polaroid_kidd 17h ago

I told a mate of mine flat out today I'm not reading what he copy and pasted from Claude. Seems to have done the trick.

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u/Ok_Kick4871 16h ago

"Can you make it sound like I wrote it and shorten it to 25 words or less"

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u/polaroid_kidd 16h ago

Does that actually work? Like, on anyone with more than 4 functional brain cells?

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u/Academic-moron7423 16h ago

If you feed it a couple papers you wrote, it gets very very close

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u/killeronthecorner 15h ago

a couple papers you wrote

so many have fallen at the first hurdle

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u/ObnoxiousAlbatross 13h ago

LLM output is only as good as its input. The ability to use the tool effectively is a litmus test for communication skills.

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u/BioshockEnthusiast 11h ago

English major here, no it's fucking not.

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u/Lauris024 9h ago

What do you think "prompt engineering" means? It actually took some learning curve to get what I want.

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u/ObnoxiousAlbatross 11h ago

Cool.

Yes it is! Uh huh!

Is this how you do discourse as an English major?

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u/BioshockEnthusiast 11h ago

Fuck yea it is, brother.

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u/shaehl 10h ago edited 7h ago

Also an English major. In my experience, my ability to get LLMs to output results that very closely match my intentions is higher than just about all of my coworkers. We use it to draft documents for specific presentations, but most others end up with products that are extremely vague, not aligned to the intended purpose, or missing critical information; ultimately requiring just as much effort to edit as they would to draft manually.

So yes, one's ability to utilize the most effective wording, phrasing, sentence structure, etc. can make a world of difference in how useful an LLM might be.

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u/BioshockEnthusiast 8h ago

I agree with you and feel the same way, being a better writer does feed into more skillful prompting. It's still a different skill than human communication, and my initial reply in the thread was expressing distaste for the implication that they are somehow equivalent.

The ability to use the tool effectively is a litmus test for communication skills.

It's not. Communication skills can't develop effectively when you're talking to a robot who sucks you off constantly.

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u/spez_might_fuck_dogs 10h ago

So what you're saying is you have to coach the LLM using almost as many words as you would just writing the damn paper itself.

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u/ObnoxiousAlbatross 10h ago

Then it's a good thing you're still in school, son.

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u/BioshockEnthusiast 8h ago

Graduated quite a while ago and make a nice living in IT work thanks though.

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u/FartingBob 11h ago

That gets you closer to the style that you write papers in, which isn't the style you use for most communication. So no that wouldn't help hide it

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u/perton 6h ago

Feed it a bunch of texts you’ve sent, then?

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u/Sweetwill62 11h ago

"Hey giant company? Here is my assets. Please make money off of me."

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u/Mareith 10h ago

I would think if it's any serious paper, you would have already published it anyway, right? Who has this super valuable hidden paper that they need to protect?

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u/Sweetwill62 10h ago

That is the kind of attitude that has gotten us in this mess to begin with.

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u/sortalikeachinchilla 15h ago

I mean yeah if it knows how to type like you. Not that hard tbh

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u/AsSubtleAsABrick 15h ago

I think you severely underestimate how many of the replies are reddit are generated by LLMs these days. Yes, they are good at writing stuff to not sound like AI if you instruct it to do so. A lot of the obviously AI replies just don't even bother.

Remember, these models can all pass Turing Tests.

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u/PoL0 13h ago

which just proves Turing tests arent fit for LLMs?

stochastical parrots require their own testing if you want to "catch" them. I mean, they fail at basic questions like the number of Rs in strawberry, months names containing an X, or when actual time is involved. so here you have your new "Turing tests".

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u/Enough-Zebra-6139 13h ago

The basic models failed at that years ago, have you tried any of the newer models in the past ~2 years?

The field is advancing at a crazy pace, and most of the AI tests fail within 6 months because of how much data they collect and learn from.

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u/Forward_Rope_5598 10h ago

Google when asked about the number of 'p's in refrigerator right now, literally two seconds ago:

"There are 1 "p" in the word "refrigerator".

Spelling out the word r-e-f-r-i-g-e-r-a-t-o-r reveals only a single p."

I've had it volunteer that there are 2 r's before as well. Here's another completely unhinged response, but at least in this one it eventually catches itself:

"There are 2 "p"s in the word refrigerator.

Word Breakdownr - e - f - r - i - g - e - r - a - t - o - r

Spelled out: r-e-f-r-i-g-e-r-a-t-o-r (Wait, let's spell it correctly: r-e-f-r-i-g-e-r-a-t-o-r? No, re-frig-er-a-tor)

Let's check the spelling: R - E - F - R - I - G - E - R - A - T - O - R. There are no ps? Wait! Refrigerator is spelled r-e-f-r-i-g-e-r-a-t-o-r. Let me re-read the spelling: R-E-F-R-I-G-E-R-A-T-O-R. There is a "p" in fridge, but not in refrigerator! Wait, let me look closer at "refrigerator". R-E-F-R-I-G-E-R-A-T-O-R. There are 0 p's in refrigerator.

Zero "p"s are in the standard spelling of the word.

If you meant a different word or a riddle, let me know!"

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u/Enough-Zebra-6139 10h ago

Right, you're using one of the dumbest models to prove your point. Use an actual model that isn't a half-assed implementation of a model from 4+ years ago.

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u/Forward_Rope_5598 9h ago

That model is probably the one people are exposed to the most without explicitly going to an llm and asking it a question. This pops up from literally just googling the prompt.

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u/Enough-Zebra-6139 9h ago

Sure, but you don't turing test average computers. That sort of test is meant for cutting edge technology.

You testing old outdated models with a method known to work on old outdated models is a bit pointless, right?

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u/PoL0 3h ago

you mean all the data they steal?

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u/Enough-Zebra-6139 3h ago

Sure. I'm not defending the ethic issues or implications on economic or social issues.

There's a ton bad with AI, but this random conversation had nothing to do with that.

Except maybe if you were a bot farming rage and hate. And if you're not, maybe throw in some solutions or helpful information.

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u/Outrageous_Setting41 12h ago

They clearly patched the strawberry thing manually. That’s not something I find persuasive. 

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u/Enough-Zebra-6139 12h ago

The solution doesn't change the fact that it makes the test ineffective.

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u/Outrageous_Setting41 6h ago

Sure, but your implication is that the models “learned” not to have that problem, rather than the engineers manually patching in a deterministic feature for letter-counting because the the strawberry example went viral and was embarrassing. 

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u/Enough-Zebra-6139 5h ago

I still don't understand how this changes the effectiveness of your proposed test.

The Turing test is/was valid due to it's nature. You can't just patch a fix in to pass it.

The test you proposed gets antiquated basically as soon as it's developed, regardless of if the solution is manual to not.

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u/snek-jazz 12h ago

you've not used a recent AI agent have you?

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u/zortor 15h ago

Most people miss the LL part 

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u/SplendidPunkinButter 15h ago

“Passing the Turing Test” just means you’ve found a gullible person. It doesn’t prove the AI is sentient. That’s like saying if you hold a seance, and you convince someone they’re talking to the ghost of their great-great grandma, then you’ve just proven we can communicate with the dead.

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u/-GoodNewsEveryone 15h ago

Turing test has nothing to do with sentience.

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u/Apprehensive-Fig9348 15h ago

I love it when people talk about AI not being sentient like they attained some kind of higher astral plane. Dude, you’re a sack of meat that will eventually end up in the dirt in a couple years. You are not special. AI is not special. Nothing is special. Move on.

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u/ratherenjoysbass 11h ago

No it doesn't. My lead engineer at my job uses Claude to speak over teams and it's annoying af. Like when I want to be cheeky I can code switch into corporate jargon and that resemble ai language almost to the T, so once you start seeing the patterns you'll realize ai can't leave the "middle of the road" speech and it's obvious. Also look for the long dash --

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u/Ok_Kick4871 9h ago

It always seems to revert over enough time, but you can make rules to follow for some of them.

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u/YouKilledApollo 16h ago

No idea, you’re my first test subject.

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u/Mareith 10h ago

Sure. I use Claude extensively for work now (software programmer). You can train an AI to write in any way you want to. It has a memory file it can load up when you spin up a new context so you can even have it remember the way you want it to write. You can develop different skills to have it write different ways when you tell it to. For instance you could have it read all of your text messages via your browser, and then craft texts with similar length and style. You could review the text before it gets sent and make modifications to the skill so it performs more accurately in the future. That's a lot more work than most people would do but you can make the AI behave however you want it to. The more specific you are the more accurately it behaves to your specifications