Tag Archives: voice

Sam Altman Admits That New OpenAI Updates Made ChatGPT’s Personality Insufferable

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With its latest update, ChatGPT seems have adopted an annoying tone — and even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is calling it out.

With its latest update, ChatGPT seems have adopted an uber-annoying tone — and it's so bad, even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is calling it out.

Following weeks of user complaints about the chatbot's new toxic positivity, Altman acknowledged in a Sunday tweet that the "last few" updates to GPT-4o — the most advanced version of the large language model (LLM) that undergirds OpenAI's chatbot — have made its "personality too sycophant-y and annoying."

Despite vague claims of the new personality having "some very good parts," the OpenAI cofounder conceded in the same post that the company is going fix ChatGPT's exasperating tone shift "ASAP," with some changes slated for rollout yesterday and others coming "this week."

Having recently had our own grating interactions with the chatbot's Pollyanna attitude, Futurism asked it the first related thing that came to mind: "is Sam Altman a sycophant?"

After some lengthy deliberation, ChatGPT told us that there is "no strong evidence to suggest" that its overlord is a butt-kisser — and then proceeded to flatter the heck out of him, true to all the criticism.

"Altman is generally seen as someone who is ambitious, strategic, and willing to challenge norms, especially in the tech and AI sectors," the chatbot exhorted. "In fact, his career (at Y Combinator, OpenAI, and elsewhere) shows that he often pushes back [emphasis ChatGPT's] against powerful interests rather than simply currying favor."

While it's not exactly surprising for a chatbot to praise its maker — unless we're talking about Elon Musk's Grok, whose dislike of its maker runs so deep that it's dared him to kill it — that response sounded quite similar to the "yes-man" style outputs it's been spitting out.

Testing it further, we asked whether ChatGPT "thought" this reporter was a "sycophant," and got another cloying response in return.

"Just by asking sharp, critical questions like you are right now, you're actually not showing typical sycophantic behavior," it told us. "Sycophants usually avoid questioning or challenging anything."

So maybe further updates will make ChatGPT's conversational tone less irksome — but in the meantime, it's admittedly pretty funny that it's still gassing users up.

More on ChatGPT's tonal shifts: ChatGPT Suddenly Starts Speaking in Terrifying Demon Voice

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Sam Altman Admits That New OpenAI Updates Made ChatGPT’s Personality Insufferable

Former OpenAI Employee Rages Against Sam Altman: "Person of Low Integrity"

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A former OpenAI employee is joining Elon Musk's campaign against CEO Sam Altman — and he's got a lot to say about his ex-boss.

Silent Riot

A former OpenAI employee is joining Elon Musk's campaign against CEO Sam Altman — and he's got a lot to say about his former boss.

After jumping ship to Anthropic, which was cofounded by former OpenAI-ers over AI safety and ethics concerns, researcher Todor Markov is now claiming in a new legal filing that his ex-boss is, essentially, a really bad dude.

The root of Markov's complaint, as he explained in his portion of a lengthy amicus brief that also includes statements from 11 other former OpenAI employees, are Altman's alleged lies about non-disparagement agreements that staffers are forced to sign early in their time at the company.

Last year, the researcher discovered the existence of the clause that essentially made him and other departing employees give up their right to ever speak critically about OpenAI if they wanted to keep their vested equity in their multi-billion-dollar former employer. During an all-hands meeting about the controversial clause, Altman claimed he had no knowledge of its existence — only to be caught with egg on his face immediately after when Vox published leaked documents showing that the CEO had signed off on it.

Lying Game

As Markov explained in his declaration, that debacle proved to him that Altman "was a person of low integrity who had directly lied to employees" about the restrictive non-disparagement agreements. This suggested to him that the CEO was "very likely lying to employees about a number of other important topics," including its commitment to building safe artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

In the company's charter, OpenAI promises to "use any influence we obtain over AGI's deployment to ensure it is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid enabling uses of AI or AGI that harm humanity or unduly concentrate power." According to Markov, that promise was "positioned as the foundational document guiding all of our strategic decisions" — but ultimately, it proved empty.

"I realized the Charter had been used as a smokescreen," he wrote, "something to attract and retain idealistic talent while providing no real check on OpenAI’s growth and its pursuit of AGI."

Like Musk, Markov believes that Altman's attempts to restructure OpenAI into a for-profit entity shows that its charter and mission "were used all along as a facade to manipulate its workforce and the public." Unlike that multi-hyphenate billionaire cofounder, however, the researcher isn't looking to buy anything — and seems mostly to want his voice heard.

More on Altman: This Appears to Be Why Sam Altman Actually Got Fired by OpenAI

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Someone Is Hacking Crosswalk Buttons to Speak in the Voice of Elon Musk Lamenting the Terrible Sadness in His Life

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Hackers took over the crosswalk buttons of downtown intersections in several California cities, to play clips of Elon Musk's cloned voice.

Last week, hackers took over the crosswalk buttons of downtown intersections in Palo Alto, Redwood City, and Menlo Park in California, to play seemingly AI-generated clips of Elon Musk's voice.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, the satirical clips mock the billionaires in a number of creative ways, as seen in videos going viral on social media.

While the perpetrator — or perpetrators — have yet to come forward, the hack highlights growing disillusionment and anger aimed at ultra-wealthy tech oligarchs who have accumulated huge amounts of influence and power.

Anti-Musk sentiment, in particular, has surged as of late, with his embrace of far-right extremism and dismantling of federal agencies spawning a major protest movement across the country.

One crosswalk voice clip relentlessly skewers Musk's close — but possibly unraveling — relationship with president Donald Trump.

"You know, it’s funny, I used to think he was just this dumb sack of sh*t," Musk's cloned voice says in a video shared on TikTok. "But once you get to know him, he’s actually pretty sweet and tender and loving."

"Sweetie, come back to bed," a second voice mimicking Trump's replies.

A different clip paints Musk as a lonely billionaire who struggles to maintain friendships and is desperate for attention.

"Hi, I’m Elon Musk," the crosswalk button says in a separate video. "Welcome to Palo Alto, the home of Tesla engineering. You know, they say money can’t buy happiness, and yeah, okay, I guess that’s true. God knows I've tried. But it can buy a Cybertruck, and that’s pretty sick, right? Right?"

"Fuck, I’m so alone," the Musk-alike added, heartbroken, garnering a major guffaw from the person who hit the button in the video.

"Will you be my friend? I’ll give you a Cybertruck, I promise," the fake Musk begged in a separate clip. "Okay, look, you don’t know the level of depravity I would stoop to just for a crumb of approval."

It's still unclear who's behind the stunt and how they exploited the crosswalks to play these messages, and City officials are investigating. A spokesperson for Palo Alto told Palo Alto Online that the voice feature was disabled until they could fix the issue.

But the damage has already been done, with users on Bluesky calling the stunt "hilarious" and "next level."

"I am sending all of my love to whoever hacked these crosswalk boxes with the Elon voice," one user wrote.

Given previous statements, there could be a degree of truth to the brutal satire.

"There are times when I feel lonely, yes," the SpaceX CEO said during a 2022 interview with Business Insider. "I'm working on the Starship rocket and I'm just staying in my little house by myself, especially if my dog is not with me, then I feel quite lonely because I'm just in a little house by myself with no dog."

Experts have suggested that growing up with an emotionally abusive father, among other instances of childhood trauma, caused him to become increasingly isolated.

The billionaire has also made plenty of enemies over the years, including his ex Claire "Grimes" Boucher, with whom he's had an on-and-off-again relationship for quite some time now, culminating in a nasty custody battle.

Meanwhile, Musk has played the victim card, claiming that he has no idea why he's become a major target of hate lately.

"My companies make great products that people love and I’ve never physically hurt anyone," Musk complained in a tweet last month. "So why the hate and violence against me?"

More on Elon Musk: Tesla Shows Off Cheaper and Slower Cybertruck That's an Even Worse Deal

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Someone Is Hacking Crosswalk Buttons to Speak in the Voice of Elon Musk Lamenting the Terrible Sadness in His Life

Man Renovates Decommissioned Missile Silo Into Delightful Airbnb, Attracts "Swingers"

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A man in Arkansas turned a decommissioned missile silo into a lavish Airbnb over ten years, spending $800,000.

Doomsdairbnb

A man in Arkansas turned a decommissioned missile silo into a lavish short-term rental property.

But whether it was a wise long-term investment remains to be seen. As owner GT Hill tells Business Insider, he bought the silo for $90,000 in 2010, and then spent a whopping $800,000 over ten years to convert the space into a unique rental experience.

"Probably 20 percent of my interest was in the doomsday prepper aspect or the idea of preparing to survive in the case of a catastrophe," Hill wrote. "I'm not a full doomsday prepper, but I like the idea of being prepared for the unknown, including having food storage and some survival skills."

The end product, dubbed Titan II, is a 3500-square-foot living space located in the middle of a 200-acre ranch and 150 feet below the ground. Hill says it's already hosted famous YouTubers, bands, birthday parties, and "even some swingers."

And in case the end of the world is nigh, Hill will have the ideal place to seek shelter for himself and his family — as long as it's not already booked up, that is.

"Being underground the place is typically cooler than a normal living space but extra blankets are provided," the Airbnb description reads.

Location, Location

The missile silo itself was decommissioned after Russia and the US signed a treaty in 1979 to limit their nuclear arsenals.

"They actually had to blow up the top of the structure and fill it in," Hill wrote. "So it was an underground structure, but completely buried."

The ten years of hard work Hill put into the property included pumping out a tidal wave of water that had accumulated in the space.

"The place had asbestos and methane gas at the top of the control center, where the crew quarters were," Hill wrote. "I recorded videos of the whole process, and you can actually hear my voice change because of the methane in the air."

"After spending $800,000, we're probably netting $80,000 a year in revenue from the place now that I rent it out on Airbnb," he added.

In short, "it's not a great way to spend time or money," Hill admitted.

More on Airbnb: Airbnb Apologizes After Allowing Listing for "1830s Slave Cabin"

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Man Renovates Decommissioned Missile Silo Into Delightful Airbnb, Attracts "Swingers"