iamtrask open-sources abcGPT: dialing in LLM voice via neuron specialization scores

iamtrask · x · 2026-09-03

iamtrask released abcGPT, an open-source repo tackling why frontier LLMs sound generically "corporate": models are a tangled superposition of millions of authors' voices that prompting can't undo. The approach builds on Karpathy's nanoGPT, assigning each neuron a random "specialty score" sampled from a U-shaped distribution (most near 0 or 1), drawing on ideas from attribution and unlearning so users can rigorously dial in a specific voice/style/source — more principled than prompt engineering. The author reports promising early results.

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