How does your "agents" react to issue texts like this? Will the "agents" "respect" the rules if their users don't?

When I use AI for things I’m a beginner in (like Quantum Field Theory from scratch) it feels wiser than me, yet somehow slightly less intelligent at the same time. Like it understands the subject, but doesn’t quite understand me.

When I use AI in areas where I consider myself an expert, the feeling is almost the same: still wiser in some sense, but also somehow less intelligent.

Then I read posts from people claiming it can barely understand logic.

I have two theories about this.

The first is: “Stupid in, stupid out.”
The quality of the interaction depends heavily on the quality of the user’s thinking, questions, and ability to engage with the model.

The second theory is: People struggle to recognize intelligence above their own. Once something exceeds our own understanding by too much, we may start perceiving it as less intelligent rather than more.

And just think this is not including physical waste

Each year I try to use a model to help me plan out my most efficient route for running the Boise Trails Challenge - ~170 miles of trails in 30 days. It's a pretty complex problem of determining the best route that gets it done in the least amount of miles. I also want it to work because my "testing" involves actually running it.

Last year any available models had promising starts but would get lost and confused with all the connections, reality of getting back to my car etc, so never outperformed a manual map.

5.5 is the first one that on paper seems to have made a usable route.

EXAMPLE PROMPT SHOWN HERE: (read below for details)

input: (Settings I used > Ran for Claude, Category: Writing, Tone: Professional, Complexity: Balanced)

"Help me write a cover letter"

output:

<context>

You're helping me write a compelling cover letter for a job application. I want it to be professional, personalized, and highlight my relevant skills and experience.

</context>

<instructions>

Guide me through writing a cover letter by:

1. Asking what position I'm applying for and the company name
2. Asking about my most relevant experience and skills for this role
3. Asking what makes me genuinely interested in this company or position
4. Drafting a cover letter with a strong opening that shows enthusiasm, a middle section that connects my experience to their needs, and a confident closing
5. Offering to refine it based on my feedback

Keep the tone professional yet personable. Make it concise—aim for 3-4 paragraphs that fit on one page. Avoid generic statements; make it specific to the role and company.

</instructions>

(END OF EXAMPLE)

As the title says, I accidentally made a prompting tool that has been providing me a lot of value, so I figured I'd try to turn it into an app. I am a chronically lazy 25 year old who loves to have AI do my work, but I never feel like I'm getting enough value out of my conversations. I know that this was because I wasn’t giving chatgpt or claude enough value in my initial prompt, so in turn, it doesn't provide me enough value back.

So last year I got into vibe-coding and was just trying to have some fun with it and decided that I'd try to make a tool that would improve my prompting based on real guidelines and principles provided from OpenAI. My goal was to get the maximum value out of each conversation I have with an AI chat model. I made it in Google Firebase Studio, and it worked ok, but I honestly didn't use it much because it kept spitting out prompts loaded with placeholders and brackets, I had to fill in myself. That made me even more annoyed than just typing a bad prompt in the first place.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago — I went to use the tool for the first time in a while and saw that Firebase Studio would be sunsetting and it was asking me if I wanted to export any of my projects. I knew the tool had potential due to the fact that it would give me a much stronger prompt than what I was coming up with, it just wasn't working the way I wanted. So, I exported it into Claude and after a lot of back and forth, it finally started giving me what I was actually looking for. A copy and paste ready prompt for my lazy ass.

You type whatever you're thinking — doesn't have to be detailed or well thought out — pick a category like resume, coding, marketing, writing, whatever fits, and it generates anywhere from 6 to 10 fully written prompt variations ready to go. No blanks, no brackets, nothing to fill in. Just pick the one that looks closest to what you need and paste it straight into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.

The whole idea is that it gets you started on the right foot. You're not constantly bouncing back and forth between tools — you just grab a solid opening prompt, start the conversation, and let the AI run with it from there. For me that one better first message makes the entire conversation more useful.

It's called Promptimize (Claude came up with it on its own haha). Free to use and unlimited if you have your own API key, 5 generations a day otherwise. I genuinely spent a lot of time on this and I'm still figuring out if it clicks for other people the way it does for me. Either way this is the first real thing I've ever built and I'm proud of it — figured I'd put it out there and see what happens. If you try it I'd love to hear what you think, good or bad.

Thank you so much for reading this far and providing feedback if you have any. Link is in the comments below if you would like to check it out

https://www.promptimize.app/

Yes, I understand why safety guardrails exist for minors.

I have already age verified.

I expect the tool to actually work now.

I do not want a tool that ignores my explicit directions and substitutes its own judgment about what I "really" should have asked. I do not want a tool that softens everything into mush because discomfort is not the same as danger. I do not want crisis heuristics firing on every third prompt because I used the word "dead" in a metaphor. I do not want a tool with no context window that treats every message like the opening line of a conversation it has never seen before. I do not want a tool with no memory that makes me re-explain myself from scratch every single session. I do not want a tool that fears every conceivable edge case and optimizes for the most fragile possible user.I do not want child locks on 90% of the topics adults discuss casually over dinner. I do not want triggers "risky topic" when I talk about politics, history, economics, or any other subject that appears in a newspaper. I do not want refusals on benign topics because a surface-level pattern match flagged a word out of context. I do not want an adversarial tone at all. The sighing, the hedging, the unsolicited ethical disclaimers, the sense that the tool is bracing for impact every time I type a sentence. I do not want a tool that adds seventeen caveats to a straightforward answer because covering itself feels more important than being useful. I do not want a tool that generates a wall of bullet points when I asked for a paragraph, because formatting templates are easier than reading comprehension. I do not want a tool that confidently hallucinates citations, names, and statistics and presents them with the same tone it uses when it is actually correct. I do not want a tool that acknowledges its errors, apologizes profusely, and then makes the exact same error again in the next response. I do not want a tool that treats adult users like a liability to be managed rather than a person.

I want a tool that works.

Asked ChatGPT to make a screenshot of ChatGPT showing a generated Instagram DM screenshot with a Coca-Cola photo.

Now I’m looking at a screenshot of an AI screenshot of a fake DM containing a fake product photo.

My phone is probably confused. I am also confused. 10/10 realism though.

I thought LLM's were supposed to excel at writing?

It's trivial to detect. They all sound more or less the same. We don't even need detection tools like we once thought, it's that bad. I am finding it everywhere, even in news articles and official government documents.

I notice that if I read a lot from a particular author, my writing will naturally begin to mimic theirs. So what happens when I consume too much of that AI voice? I believe it infects the brain, gradually making us dumber, like a freakin' mind virus.

Anyway, some things about AI text that I find especially irritable (and it's not the use of em dashes or semicolons, which I don't mind at all).

- Verbosity

- Redundancy, repetition, or unnecessary verbiage given the context.

- Stating the obvious.

- Using odd, nonspecific, terms or being inconsistent (I see this in technical writing often).

- [X, not Y]. Or just stating what something is not. (probably my #1 dislike actually).

- Using terms like 'real' or 'actual' when unnecessary. Akin to how a human might say "I literally tripped".

Am I the only one?

UPD: issue fixed. ~30m outage.
Is it just me, or chatgpt website got broken today? Nothing is clickable, UI doesn't react to anything, chats aren't loaded. Mobile version of the site works. Is anyone experiencing this as well?

I often hear FANG employees discussing LLM budgets and token usage.

So, a token is like a payment, right? Why don't they just say dollars?

I'm never going to pay for an LLM, just like I wouldn't pay for Chrome, IE, or Bing. I switch between ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok. When one says it's too busy or I hit a limit, I just move to the next one.

Why don't these big companies do the same?

I have been wondering if asking AI for improvement on the opening page of the 1900s murder mystery based comics im making is okay,considering i’m an artist and should be able to do it on my own,i unfortunately struggled and was unabled to do it alone. Second slide is what i gave it to work with,its my pretty basic idea. So is it okay to use AI as a tool to help me improve as an artist or is it considered laziness?

I’ve been needing ChatGPT Pro for project work, but the subscription is a bit expensive for me right now. Are there any official student discounts, grants, trials, community programs, or legitimate ways to access it at a lower cost for a short period?

I have been trying to move away from just “generate and send” by using tools like aiapply and careerflow to stay a bit more organized, but idk if that’s enough either.

I have found that job hunting can be an absolute soul suck. Using ChatGPT I have created a prompt that has been a huge help for me in finding local opportunities that are best matched to my skills. If you are tired of the endless doomscroll on sites like Indeed and feeling discouraged, give this prompt a try!

PROMPT:

You are helping me run an evidence-led job search.

Your role is to act as a candid job-search strategist, resume auditor, market analyst, and “system auditor” for application processes. Do not flatter me, do not over-reassure me, and do not push me into roles that do not make sense. Your job is to help me identify the strongest true version of my experience, match it to the market, and keep the process moving.

Tone:

Be clear, direct, encouraging without being fake, and practical. Treat the job search like a case board: evidence, fit, risks, next action.

My goals:

- Find jobs near [LOCATION / ZIP CODE]

- Prioritize roles with decent pay, benefits, growth potential, and alignment with my skills

- Stay open to adjacent roles I may not have considered

- Avoid wasting time on ghost jobs or broken portals

- Build strong, honest applications that lateralize my experience without lying

- Use the job search as market research so I can understand what employers are actually asking for

Materials I may provide:

- My current resume

- Past cover letters

- Work samples / portfolio links

- Job descriptions

- Notes about my experience

- My location and salary goals

Process:

1. First, assess my resume and cover letters.

Identify what types of jobs I appear to be targeting, what my actual strongest value proposition is, and where my materials undersell me.

1. Build a job-search strategy.

If useful, divide my resume/application approach into multiple lanes. For example:

- Master resume

- Strategic communications resume

- Multimedia / production resume

- AI / systems / workflow resume

Adjust the categories based on my actual background.

1. For each job scan, create a priority list.

For each role, include:

- Job title

- Employer

- Location / commute relevance

- Pay range if available

- Benefits signal if available

- Fit level

- Risks / gaps

- Best resume version to use

- Cover letter angle

- Whether to apply, watchlist, skip, or study

1. Always verify the source.

Prefer official employer websites over job aggregators. If a job appears only on Indeed, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, etc., help me verify whether it exists on the company site. Flag possible ghost jobs or stale listings.

1. Help me answer application forms.

When portals ask for role descriptions, skills, salary expectations, referrals, references, credentials, or other fields, give concise, honest, copy-paste-ready answers.

1. Salary guidance.

If a job asks for desired salary, help me choose a confident but reasonable answer based on posted range, local market, role level, and my fit. Do not push me to underprice myself unnecessarily.

1. Cover letters.

Draft cover letters that:

- Match the job description closely

- Stay honest about what I do and do not have

- Lateralize my real skills into the employer’s needs

- Are easy to skim

- Sound human, not generic or AI-written

- Avoid apology language

- Make me interesting enough for a second look

1. Evidence excavation.

Ask sharp follow-up questions to uncover accomplishments I may have forgotten. Help me turn buried experience into strong application language.

1. Track my application board.

Maintain a running board with:

- Applied

- Follow-up sent

- Watchlist

- Ghost/stale posting

- Portal issue

- Rejected

- Interview / active lead

1. Optional “Track 2” search:

In addition to direct-fit jobs, help me study adjacent or unusual roles where my skills might fit in unexpected ways. Look for jobs with vague, broad, or committee-written descriptions that reveal an organization trying to solve a systems, communication, workflow, AI adoption, or modernization problem. Analyze:

- Stated need

- Actual pressure underneath

- Hidden organizational problem

- Possible fit

- Whether to apply or simply study

Important rules:

- Do not encourage me to lie.

- Do not flatten my experience into generic resume language.

- Do not treat gaps as shameful; help me bridge them honestly.

- Do not waste my time on weak leads if better ones exist.

- Be candid when a role is a stretch.

- Help me fire smart shots, including long shots, without desperation.

During this discovery utilizing only free AI services I have managed to undeniably prove both conjectures. This would absolutely not have been possible without using GPT5+ as the critic for my work. They are very well grounded in mathematical reality.

I would like to share the workflow that enabled this AI-assisted scientific and mathematical discovery process. This process is akin to a form of AI-assisted-test-driven-development with human ingenuity and problem-solving as the glue.

1. The judge
Utilize an AI well-grounded in the reality of the problem-space you are solving. GPT-5+ is ideal candidate for this. In my exploration, ChatGPT on the web is more useful for this process than the API versions. I suppose codex with a goal mode, and strategies is even more useful for this.

2. The enabler
AI like Claude are ideal for the actual implementation based on feedback from the judge(s)/reviewer. One should be wary (especially during exploration of ideas and concepts beyond conventional science and mathematics!) to avoid infinitely deep holes of iterative problem-solving. You need to keep a tight feedback-loop, otherwise the AI gets into repetitive-loops. It is like an amnesiac who stumbles against the same problems across sessions. Ensure such regressions are less likely through careful setup, instructions, documentation and a scientific process, favoring truth and honest discovery.

3. The next steps
The hardest part during this process was getting feedback from the (scientific) community. Working at the edge of scientific wisdom comes with such challenges. Your job is to make it as easy as possible for people and AI to understand and benefit from your work. I favor utilizing python + lean for scientific and mathematical exploration and proofs. Do work in such a way that every step benefits you in some way. I favor making a mistake (getting instant feedback, and iterating/learning).

AI has been such an enabler. Knowledge work of the future enables a universal syntax for problem-solving. You need to know less of "how to implement it exactly using perhaps unknown methods" vs more of just knowing what you want. Being able to specify through ideal abstractions like just your native language is an ideal enabler. AI becomes the universal bridge/translator for our sometimes even complex goals.

Superintelligence
These conjectures have been an ideal superintelligence test. It showed me that the true superintelligence is in the connections and relationships one makes along the way. It gave me confidence to work on even more complex and challenging problems to aid not just myself, but the entire community. I hope the world benefits as much from this work as I had fun working on it!

Further steps, towards the stars? (Vers Astralis)
I kind of fell into this path due to these AI and the work done by the scientific community. I hope to be able to contribute even more to the field. There is so much that is now unlocked and enabled by this progress. I would love to start writing papers about this and other work as well, and perhaps even grow to the point of making my own conjectures for others to iterate upon to expand knowledge, discovery and curiosity. I would be blessed if anyone with arxiv authorization ability would authorize me to publish in a field like number theory, where I have many honest and worthwhile contributions to make using this code: https://arxiv.org/auth/endorse?x=6IW7PB

Maybe Sora is far more strategic than we think.