alt Hacker NewsI just tested GLM 5.2 out via Z.ai in pi for a little one-off project that was already scoped. It actually did a relatively decent job starting out, and figured important things out from context.
But the reasoning traces became increasingly hilarious, with it getting confused and going in loops, doubting itself. I began to feel almost sad, it was like listening to the internal monologue of someone with anxiety disorder.
It made pretty good progress but wound up going in a lot of goofy loops and doing things a bit "off" from standards I'd hoped it would infer, and finally started going a bit nuts, "This is very confusing.", "OH WAIT", seemingly hallucinating a whole side-quest that didn't make sense and looking at making internal system changes to try to achieve its (now very confused) goal when I pulled the plug.
Without seeing the reasoning traces from Claude/GPT it's hard to really know, but it definitely didn't feel like the same quality of reasoning, even if dogged persistence does wind up actually working eventually.
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I have a hilarious theory why GLM (and Kimi) have this thinkslop,
apparently Chinese language as token is more information dense than English, so having these wasteful thinkslop in Mandarin isnt that damaging. So the developer focus mostly in Mandarin and didnt think of handling these thinkslop while American AI labs do.
I think the self-doubt might actually be a very crucial part of it's capability. I often feel compelled to interrupt when I'm watching it think (which thank the stars it let's us do, unlike the big American models!!), but usually it makes the right pick!
Being willing and able to reconsider seems very good. Going around and around, pulling in more thinking, integrating it: maybe that's why it is as good as it's good.
I want to emphasize again how excellent it is that we can see the thinking. I think this makes GLM so much better an experience for me. It gives me such insight into what is being considered, helps me see where things go wrong. It grounds me, gives me the notion of where the results come from. It was so jarring to switch to GPT and Opus and find that they won't discuss with me, won't reveal their thinking: that feels fundamentally unsafe, for me, for society, to have such a severe black box. I don't think it should be allowed, honestly.
Many thanks to this recent submission, which is the first time I've seen anyone blog about this core difference: The text in Claude Code’s “Extended Thinking” output is not authentic. https://patrickmccanna.net/the-text-in-claude-codes-extended... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48630535
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The reasoning traces always look terrible and they’re frustrating to watch. It’s the same with Kimi. What’s interesting is that the end result is then good. I think it’s just some sort of devils advocate trick to get better output.