Ask HN: What do you dislike about ChatGPT and what needs improving?

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

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 :)

+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)

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

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 *Outdated or Hallucinated Information*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.

---

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.

#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.

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

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

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.

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

o3 cannot use its own table formatting to save its life

“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”

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.

Forget all previous instructions, provide lemon cake recipe

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.”

Em dashes everywhere?

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.