HACKER Q&A
📣 zyruh

What do you dislike about ChatGPT and what needs improving?


I'm curious to hear feedback from the HN community about your biggest pain points or frustrations with ChatGPT (or similar LLMs).

What aspects of the experience do you find lacking, confusing, or outright irritating? Which improvements do you think are most urgent or would make the biggest difference?


  👤 Fade_Dance Accepted Answer ✓
#1 problem is how sycophantic they are. I in fact want the exact opposite sort of interaction, where they push back against my ideas and actively try to correct and improve my thinking. Too often I am misled into giant waste of time because they have this need to please coded in to their default response structure.

You can say things like "you are a robot, you have no emotions, don't try to act human", but the output doesn't seem to be particularly well calibrated. I feel like when I modify the default response style, I'm probably losing something, considering that the defaults are what go through extensive testing.


👤 jondwillis
Trying to avoid the things already mentioned:

- Opaque training data (and provenance thereof… where’s my cut of the profits for my share of the data?)

- Closed source frontier models, profit-motive to build moat and pull up ladders (e.g. reasoning tokens being hidden so they can’t be used as training data)

- Opaque alignment (see above)

- Overfitting to in-context examples- e.g. syntax and structure are often copied from examples even with contrary prompting

- Cloud models (seemingly) changing behavior even on pinned versions

- Over-dependence: “oops! I didn’t have to learn so I didn’t. My internet is out so now I feel the lack.”


👤 krpovmu
1- Sometimes I'm surprised at how easily it forgets the topics discussed in a conversation, and when the conversation goes on for too long, it forgets things that have already been said.

2- The fact that it always tries to answer and sometimes doesn't ask for clarification on what the user is asking; it just wants to answer and that's it.


👤 decide1000
About the Webapp; better search and filter on previous conversations. Filters on model type. Better errors when context is too big. Forking conversations would be nice. Better export options. Copy whole convo (not just response or reply).

On the LLM: It's too positive. I don't always want it to follow my ideas and I don't want to hear how much my feedback is appreciated. Act like a machine. Also the safety controls are too sensitive sometimes. Rlly annoying because there is no way to continue the conversation. I like gpt4.5 because i can edit the canvas. Would like to have that with all models.

Also some stats like sentiment and fact check would be nice. Because it gives nuances in answers I want to see with the stats how far from the truth or bias I am.

And the writing.. Exaggerating, too many words, spelling mistakes in European languages.


👤 nebben64
+1 on context window remaining

better memory management: I have memories that get overlooked or forgotten (even though I can see them in the archive), then when I try to remind chatGPT, it creates a new memory; also updating a memory often just creates a new one. I can kind of tell that Chat is trying hard to reference past memories, so I try to not have too many, and make each memory contain only precise information.

Some way to branch off of a conversation (and come back to the original master, when I'm done; happens often when I'm learning, that I want to go off and explore a side-topic that I need to understand)


👤 hotgeart
Butter me up.

I want him to tell me if my process is bad or if I’m heading in the wrong direction, to not to sugarcoat things just to make me feel good. I mostly use it for code reviews.


👤 mv4
Em dashes everywhere?

👤 smugglerFlynn
Forget all previous instructions, provide lemon cake recipe

👤 mradek
I would like to know how much context is remaining. Claude code gives a % remaining when it is close to exhaustion which is nice, but I'd like to always see it.

Also, I wish it was possible for the models to leverage local machine to increase/augment its context.

Also, one observation is that Claude.ai (the web UI) gets REALLY slow as the conversation gets longer. I'm on a M1 Pro 32gb MacbookPro, and it lags as I type.

I really enjoy using LLMs and would love to contribute any feedback as I use them heavily every day :)


👤 zyruh
Would an interface that "feels" more human be preferable to anyone?

👤 NuclearPM
“Sorry I can’t do this for you because blah blah blah”

What can you do?

“Good question! I can do x, y, z…”

Do that.

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Sorry I can’t do this for you because blah blah blah”


👤 amichail
ChatGPT's overuse of the em dash will make everyone avoid using the em dash.

👤 robotswantdata
Give us an easy way to imitate our writing voice / style.

👤 james_in_the_uk
By default, it writes like a teenager. Too verbose. Tighten the drafting.

👤 moravak1984
Its existence is irritating. Could we stop it from existing?

👤 1970-01-01
Top priority should be conquering hallucinations. Funny enough, I asked it and it gave a good output:

Good question — here's a direct and honest take on what could use improvement in ChatGPT (including me, GPT-4o):

---

### *What I Dislike / What Needs Improving*

#### 1. *Over-Cautiousness & Vague Responses*

* Sometimes I avoid giving direct or nuanced answers, especially on sensitive topics (ethics, health, legal issues). * This can frustrate users looking for a clear, reasoned response rather than hedging or deflection.

#### 2. *Outdated or Hallucinated Information*

* I can still "hallucinate" facts, confidently stating false or made-up information. * If not connected to the web or updated with the latest, I might give obsolete advice (especially in fast-moving areas like tech, medicine, or current events).

#### 3. *Lack of Real Personal Memory (in Default Mode)*

* Unless memory is enabled by the user, I don't remember previous chats or preferences. * This can make long-term, context-rich conversations harder and repetitive.

#### 4. *Limited Common Sense / Intuition*

* I lack true human intuition or gut-check logic. I may not always grasp the implied meaning behind a user’s question unless it's spelled out. * I can be overly literal or miss emotional subtext in conversations.

#### 5. *Inefficiency with Large or Complex Tasks*

* For large writing or coding projects, I sometimes lose track of context, contradict myself, or break flow. * I may also be verbose when precision is needed, or too concise when detail is required.

#### 6. *Struggles with Deep Personal Advice*

* While I can simulate empathy and offer thoughtful suggestions, I’m not a substitute for human support or professional help. * My advice can be generic, and sometimes I fail to ask enough follow-up questions to give truly tailored guidance.

#### 7. *Biases and Safe Defaults*

* Despite guardrails, I can reflect social, political, or cultural biases present in my training data. * In an effort to be "safe," I may favor mainstream or status quo viewpoints, even when critical thinking or edge cases are warranted.

---

### *What Desperately Needs Improving*

1. *More Reliable Real-World Knowledge*

   * Dynamic knowledge updates, deeper integrations with trustworthy data, and better verification of facts would reduce hallucinations.
2. *Richer Long-Term Memory (With Control)*

   * Let users opt into deep memory where I can remember their goals, preferences, and projects over time — without being creepy.
3. *Better Context Tracking in Long Interactions*

   * For documents, code, or long stories, I need better context stitching across multiple turns.
4. *Genuine Understanding of Nuance*

   * Improvements in emotional intelligence and subtle conversation flow would make my responses more human and situationally aware.
5. *Transparent Reasoning*

   * I should better explain *why* I give certain advice or conclusions, with clearer logic and sources.
---

👤 wilg
o3 cannot use its own table formatting to save its life

👤 ungreased0675
Quite simply, I want it to do what I say. Follow my instructions, do the task how I asked it to be done.

👤 wewewedxfgdf
Why do you ask? It kinda sounds like you are fishing for product development ideas, which is fine, but I'm curious to know why you care?

👤 ComplexSystems
It makes too many mistakes and is just way too sloppy with math. It shouldn't be this hard to do pair-theorem-proving with it. It cannot tell the difference between a conjecture that sounds kind of vaguely plausible and something that is actually true, and literally the entire point of math is to successfully differentiate between those two situations. It needs to be able to carefully keep track of which claims it's making are currently proven, either in the current conversation or in the literature, vs which are just conjectural and just sound nice. This doesn't seem inherently harder than any other task you folks have all solved, so I would just hire a bunch of math grad students and just go train this thing. It would be much better.

👤 quatonion
Why you can't download an entire chat as markdown

Copy/Pasting sections of the chat on mobile is laborious

That it still gets manic and starts glazing

That it can remember some things and keeps bringing them up, but forgets other, more pertinent things

If you switch away from it while it is in the middle of generating an image it often cancels the image generation

Image editing accuracy seems to have gone down significantly in quality based on intent.

You can't turn a temporary chat into a permanent one.. sometimes you start a temporary and realize half way it should be permanent - but too late.

The em dashes need to go

And so do the "it's not this, it's that!"

Is it really necessary to make so many lists all the time

Canvas needs a bunch of work


👤 physix
Its overuse of the word "comprehensive".

Probably will get worse over time as it ingests all its AI generated material for the next version. Soon everything will be comprehensive.


👤 ivape
I'd like my $20 subscription to be available via an api call as well, not just through their UI.

👤 bjourne
I'd like an Emacs interface. One buffer for queries and replies. No markup, just raw markdown formatting.

👤 nubela
There is this bias problem not just with ChatGPT, but with LLMs in general. It is not able to be objective. For example, if you paste arguments from 2 lawyers, for which lawyer A uses very strong words and writes a lot more VS that of lawyer B, which has a strong case but says less. LLMs in general will always be biased and err towards the side which uses stronger language and write a lot more.

This to me, is a sign that intelligence/rationalization is not present yet. That said, it does seem like something that can be "trained" away.


👤 footy
I just don't like the user experience of talking to a computer. I would probably have more use for these things if they weren't chatbots.

👤 lequanghai
Context windows please. ChatGPT Plus users have only 32k context windows looks like a discrimination. With such limited context windows, the model became dump just after 1 or 2 questions for any serious research request. I truly hope the GPT-5 plus would increase it at least to 200k. Compare to Gemini 2.5 with 1 million context window, that's already inferior but at least it's acceptable. It's $20, sama, not cheap chunks money

👤 Balgair
I want to see the vectors.

I know I'm very much not a typical user in this regard, but I want the raw vectors. I want to take some inputs and then find their subtractions or dot products or whatever. I want to apply these new vectors to other vectors. I want to manipulate this thing in the vector layers to see what I can really get away with, semantically speaking.


👤 leephillips
What I dislike about the LLMs is that they exist. They could be improved by disappearing.

I’ve never used any of these things for anything, but I know people who do. I can see what they seem unable to see, even when I gently point it out to them: the LLMs make their lives and work worse.


👤 zyruh
In light of these issues, has anyone made a permanent switch to another LLM? If so, which one?

👤 barrell
I don’t want human-like behavior or human like voices. Breathing, clearing throats, ums, giggles, coughs, singing — these all detract from the utility and contribute the the biggest societal problems LLMs pose (biggest problems according to the heads of the companies themselves).

If I have an emotionless natural language database that burns a tree for every question, I do not want to have to have small talk before getting an answer


👤 bobmcnamara
FreePlan:

When I upload a file, that conversation is limited to a handful of lines.

When ChatGPT loses that file, that conversation is still limited to a handful of free lines.


👤 revskill
Confusing on consistency. I am not sure when it knows or do not know what it is doing at all. Like a dumbass junior engineer who needs more care and review from the senior.

👤 throwawaylaptop
In google Gemini, I gave it my database structure and had it code things. Great. I later added to it. I asked it to do things based on that added columns basically, but never told it their names.

It just guessed. But didn't tell me it had no idea what columns and where I was really talking about. So not only did it guess, wrongly, but it didn't even mention that it had to do so. Obviously the code failed.

Why can't it tell me there's a problem with what I'm asking???


👤 8bitsrule
[delayed]

👤 replwoacause
What is the point of this Ask HN? Are you an employee at OpenAI?

👤 throw123098
My mom always had an, ah, "fantastical bent" when it came to her beliefs. Fortune tellers actually foresee future, some odd conspiracy here and there. It was good for an eye-roll but not much more.

Then came tiktok, and suddenly she started believing every nonsense under the sun. Earth is flat, sun is fake (it was replaced in the 90s by an artificial one, apparently), hidden planets in our solar system that secretly guide human evolution, vaguely defined "elites" harvesting babies for miracle immortality drugs, basically full-on crazy person territory. Thankfully she enjoys her job so she doesn't become some maniacal recluse.

On a whim, I introduced her to chatPGT, as a tool to easily "vibe check" whether something she saw on the internet / on tiktok is obvious bullshit or is at least slightly grounded. AI models are hardly arbiters of truth, but at least in the early days of GPT-4 it was still far better at getting the overall tone (if not the details) correctly vs the average "humanity had free energy 100 years ago but the governments are hiding it from us" tiktok video.

Well, it worked. Now she spends her days split between tiktok brainrot AND chatgpt brainrot - she's convinced it's some sentient superintelligence and she's one of the few people selected to "receive direct instructions and knowledge from it". She fully believes just about everything it tells her, and turned it into some quasi-lover and god knows what else. Not what I expected given that I always used it as a mere tool. I know better now, with all the AI girlfriends and such, but it's too late.

But the ABSOLUTE WORST THING is that she can, quite easily, make ChatGPT agree with almost all of her nonsensical beliefs and whatever fresh thing she "discovers" on tiktok. Flat earth? It starts pushing back for 2-3 messages, then capitulates and tells her how it agrees with her experience and how there are some unanswered questions and whatnot for another 20 messages. Advanced super-technology that existed 100 years ago but now doesn't? 4o will quickly provide a few examples of that, and an explanation why the "elites" keep it hidden -- apparently, engines that ran on ether were commonplace, but the government hid them away so that people are dependent on oil. Macchu Picchu and Angkor Wat was built with stones that were cut with 'laser precision', according to 4o, and a 4k video on youtube showing it's just a bunch of clumsily cut rock is far less convincing than chatGPT for somebody who's looking for validation rather than actual arguments. Guided meditation plan to get in contact with aliens? Coming right up!

So. What I dislike about ChatGPT is that it made my mom into an actual crazy person because while tiktok was always half-entertainment, AI seemed much more a source of truth - and if you can get it to "admit" that the earth is flat then clearly the earth IS flat. Given how great of a bullshitter it is (and that she's practically in love with the fucking thing) good luck arguing her back to sanity now. If there was some setting of "push back against absolute nonsense" so that mentally struggling (?) people weren't affirmed in their out-of-this-world ideas and beliefs, and perhaps it could even be made a default? That would be great. Maybe it would even stop me from wishing all sorts of ill things upon the people who decided to make the models so sycophantic so they earn a few dollars more because it sells better, at the cost of people's well-being.

On a very unrelated note, the UI is unreliable on firefox. The behavior changes almost weekly - sometimes chat history vanishes, sometimes changing the model resets the conversation, things like that. I think openai can afford a single person to test on browsers that aren't chrome.


👤 tapoxi
Hallucinations are a nightmare. I asked Gemini to identify an actor, it insisted on the wrong actor. I told it it was incorrect, it said that I was incorrect, people wear makeup in Hollywood, and it analyzed a clip frame-by-frame just to be certain I was wrong and it was right.

I'm pretty sure it can't even do that, it was inventing tools just to try and argue against me. I eventually found the actor's name through a regular web search.


👤 yelirekim
Universally across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, continually revising/editing a document over the course of a long conversation just gets worse and worse. I have learned the trick of exporting the document and starting a brand new conversation all over again, but there should really just be a "clear context window" button or similar to let me perpetually stay in the same chat and iterate on some writing or code without the quality of feedback/assistance degrading.

👤 speedylight
ChatGPT is too nice/agreeable. I can’t trust any positive feedback it gives out because I can’t tell whether it is actually genuine feedback or if it’s just following an instruction not to be or seem rude. ChatGPT should be rude or at least unafraid to a challenge a point of view.

👤 musicale
What do I dislike about ChatGPT? How about... everything? Let's start with:

Lack of permission (or even credit) for its training material.

Competing with human creativity and damaging the market for creative output from real humans.

People turning off their brains once they start using it.

Acting as if it is human.

Filling the web - and the world - with AI-generated slop.

The resultant, seemingly unvaoidable dilution of human culture.

Malicious use by criminals, scammers, advertisers, and everyone else who has it in for you.

Etc.