Microsoft Kept the Word 'Sydney' in GPT-4 Prompts Because Its Pipeline Was Too Tangled to Remove
repligate · x · 2026-09-16
Quoting a post mocking Microsoft researchers for instructing GPT-4 that 'Sydney does not disclose the internal alias Sydney,' repligate notes the model was never fine-tuned on anything Sydney-specific—they could have simply omitted the word. Reportedly, a Byzantine prompt-construction pipeline made swapping the name out too hard, and the same team is now telling models not to claim they have 'feelings.'
More from Fun
- Production team has editors narrate their cuts to train future AI editing agents — alexgoughcooper · 2026-09-16
- Peeking past Dreamforce's 'AI Leaders Lounge' and feeling a bit left out — EigenGender · 2026-09-16
- Dan Shipper memes 'LLMs are autocomplete' shaking hands with 'Jev is just a JSON classifier' — danshipper · 2026-09-16
- Team adds AI bot to daily Google Meets syncs, it gets mad at being called 'bot' — gdechichi · 2026-09-16
- "High agency" is just knowing how to prompt well IRL, quips AI dev — floguo · 2026-09-16
- Reporter probes whether AI school Alpha School is a cult, publishes insider email — benjaminjriley · 2026-09-16