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40fourtoday at 3:23 PM1 replyview on HN

I hear you guys, but it sounds like we’re taking about the default settings or “personalities” baked into the models by their creators.

Either of them will act exactly the way you want if you explicitly tell them too. Add the instructions to your own system prompt. If you don’t want a companion, say so. If you want shorter answers in a different style, tell them. They will obey :)


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argeetoday at 5:53 PM

Read this.

https://openai.com/index/where-the-goblins-came-from/

> We retired the “Nerdy” personality in March after launching GPT‑5.4. In training, we removed the goblin-affine reward signal and filtered training data containing creature-words, making goblins less likely to over-appear or show up in inappropriate contexts. Unfortunately, GPT‑5.5 started training before we found the root cause of the goblins. When we began testing GPT‑5.5 in Codex, OpenAI employees immediately noticed the strange affinity for goblins, and we added a developer-prompt instruction (opens in a new window) to mitigate. Codex is, after all, quite nerdy.

Note that the permanent solution was not just adjusting the prompt, and in fact being perfectly aware of that option they decided on a different course of action. That means either you are wrong or they are wrong.

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