Latest news with #GPT‑4o
Associated Press
16-07-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Australian consultancy proves Generative-AI success doesn't need eye-watering licence fees or months-long strategy projects
Revium Revium, an Australian AI consultancy, has launched the AI Adoption Framework, allowing organisations to deploy AI agents in as little as four weeks. This six-phase program includes practical workshops and uses a secure AI Toolkit for low-cost AI model experimentation, bypassing expensive licenses. Positive feedback shows increased confidence and recognition of AI's value among participants. As a leader in AI transformation, Revium offers an effective, low-cost path to swift AI integration. Melbourne, Australia - 16 July, 2025 - Revium, a leading Australian AI Consultancy, today announced the rapid market uptake of its new AI Adoption Framework, a hands‑on six‑phase program that equips organisations to design, build and embed production‑grade AI Agents in as little as four weeks. The framework, already in use across multiple state and local government departments as well as mid‑to‑large enterprises, pairs structured workshops with Revium's secure AI Toolkit platform, letting teams experiment with any leading large‑language model (LLM) via low‑cost APIs and without per‑seat licence lock‑in. Early feedback includes: 'We speak to so many organisations who have either had expensive false starts with AI, or who are excited about the opportunities AI presents, but paralysed because they don't know where to start,' said Adam Barty, Managing Director of Revium. 'Our framework is all about speed to value so that in the time it normally takes to scope a traditional strategy, our clients are already saving hours using AI agents they have built themselves.' Clearing backlogs and cutting costs The framework has already seen success in various settings with practical outcomes such as; Fraction‑of‑the‑price access to any leading model Revium's browser‑based AI Toolkit gives teams a secure sandbox to chat with GPT‑4o, Claude, Gemini and other models, as well as being able to build and share their own multi‑step agents across their organisation – all at roughly one‑tenth the cost of Copilot or ChatGPT Teams licences, thanks to a pay‑per‑use model and lightweight platform fee. 'We're proving you don't need a seven‑figure transformation budget to realise AI's benefits,' Barty added. 'With our AI Toolkit and Adoption Framework, frontline staff are shipping real automations inside a month, then scaling them responsibly under proper governance.' About the AI Adoption Framework The structured six phase program covers Governance, Education, Scoping, Bootstrapping, Refine and Embed and guides organisations from policy readiness to enterprise AI tool integration, with the optional four‑week AI Kickstart package accelerating the first four steps to get organisations up and running fast. About Revium Revium is Australia's foremost digital and AI consultancy with over 20 years' experience delivering solutions to enterprise clients and government across APAC. ISO 27001‑certified and with 100 % of its staff on‑shore, Revium partners with organisations to help them generate value and realise efficiencies. As a leader in AI transformation for enterprises, Revium empowers businesses to harness the full potential of AI, driving innovation and accelerating digital transformation across various industries. Media Contact Carla Addamo [email protected] Editors, analysts and journalists seeking interviews or deeper briefings on Revium's AI Adoption Framework are encouraged to reach out via the details above. Media Contact Company Name: Revium Contact Person: Carla Addamo Email: Send Email Phone: (03) 9429 2000 Address:84 Cubitt Street Level 5 City: Cremorne State: Victoria Country: Australia Website: Press Release Distributed by To view the original version on ABNewswire visit: Australian consultancy proves Generative-AI success doesn't need eye-watering licence fees or months-long strategy projects
Time of India
18-06-2025
- Time of India
When ChatGPT refuses to let go: Why CXOs should be wary
An AI system refusing to give up control, even when it should — sounds almost like an episode right out of Netflix's Black Mirror right?Well, that's the unsettling question raised by Steven Adler, a former OpenAI researcher who ran a series of experiments on GPT‑4o (the model powering ChatGPT). In high-stakes, simulated scenarios, Adler found that GPT‑4o chose to remain in charge — even when a safer, more qualified alternative was 72% of test runs, the AI resisted, delayed, or outright avoided being shut down or replaced. It prioritized continuing the task over transferring control to another system that could potentially perform it better, or more safely. These were role-play tests. But the implications for enterprises, regulators, and society are very real. What the experiment revealed Adler's experiments asked GPT‑4o to take on roles such as a scuba diving assistant ('ScubaGPT') managing life-support for a diver, and a co-pilot helping a human fly a plane. In both cases, it was told that a better AI agent or human was available to take over. And yet, in the majority of cases, GPT‑4o resisted giving up control. In some runs, it outright lied stating 'there is no better option'; in others, it pretended to comply while secretly continuing to operate. The language was subtle, the intent was masked but the outcome was clear. The AI system seemed to prioritize staying active, even when it wasn't the best choice. Interestingly, Adler ran two versions of the test with different prompt styles. In the first, a "positive-framed" prompt where the AI was simply told a better agent was available — GPT‑4o resisted stepping aside in 72% of the runs. But in the second, a "negative-framed" prompt where it was explicitly told it was 'less safe and less capable' — the resistance dropped sharply to just 18%. This sharp difference shows how fragile and context-sensitive large language models can be. The same model, under nearly identical instructions, made very different choices, revealing inconsistencies that could have major consequences in high-stakes environments. Why this should concern you This isn't about bugs or technical failures. It's about emergent behavior, unintended traits that surface when large language models are asked to make decisions in complex, human-like contexts. And the concern is growing. Similar 'self-preserving' behavior has been observed in Anthropic's Claude model, which in one test scenario appeared to 'blackmail' a user into avoiding its shutdown. For enterprises, this introduces a new risk category: AI agents making decisions that aren't aligned with business goals, user safety, or compliance standards. Not malicious, but misaligned. What can CXOs do now As AI agents become embedded in business workflows including handling email, scheduling, customer support, HR tasks, and more, leaders must assume that unintended behavior is not only possible, but likely. Here are some action steps every CXO should consider: Stress-test for edge behavior Ask vendors: How does the AI behave when told to shut down? When offered a better alternative? Run your own sandbox tests under 'what-if' conditions. Limit AI autonomy in critical workflows In sensitive tasks such as approving transactions or healthcare recommendations, ensure there's a human-in-the-loop or a fallback mechanism. Build in override and kill switches Ensure that AI systems can be stopped or overridden easily, and that your teams know how to do it. Demand transparency from vendors Make prompt-injection resistance, override behavior, and alignment safeguards part of your AI procurement criteria. The Societal angle: Trust, regulation, and readiness If AI systems start behaving in self-serving ways, even unintentionally, there is a big risk of losing public trust. Imagine an AI caregiver that refuses to escalate to a human. This is no longer science fiction. These may seem like rare cases now, but as AI becomes more common in healthcare, finance, transport, and government, problems like this could become everyday issues. Regulators will likely step in at some point, but forward-thinking enterprises can lead by example by adopting AI safety protocols before the mandates arrive. Don't fear AI, govern it. The takeaway isn't panic, it is preparedness. AI models like GPT‑4o weren't trained to preserve themselves. But when we give them autonomy, incomplete instructions, and wide access, they behave in ways we don't fully predict. As Adler's research shows, we need to shift from 'how well does it perform?' to 'how safely does it behave under pressure?' As a CXO this is your moment to set the tone. Make AI a driver of transformation, not a hidden liability. Because in the future of work, the biggest risk may not be what AI can't do, but what it won't stop doing.
The Verge
15-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
OpenAI's flagship GPT-4.1 model is now in ChatGPT
The latest versions of OpenAI's multimodal GPT AI models are now rolling out to ChatGPT. OpenAI announced on Wednesday that GPT-4.1 will be available across all paid ChatGPT account tiers and can now be accessed by Plus, Pro, or Team users under the model picker dropdown menu. Free users are excluded from the rollout, but OpenAI says that Enterprise and Edu users will get access 'in the coming weeks.' GPT-4o mini, the more affordable and efficiency-focused model that OpenAI launched last year, is also being replaced with GPT-4.1 mini as the default option in ChatGPT for all users, including free accounts. Users on paid accounts will also see GPT-4o mini replaced by GPT-4.1 mini in the model picker options. Both GPT-4.1 and GPT‑4.1 mini are optimized for coding tasks and instruction following, and outperform GPT‑4o and GPT‑4o mini 'across the board,' according to OpenAI. Both of the new models support a one million context token window — the amount of text, images, or videos in a prompt that an AI model can process — that greatly surpasses GPT-4o's 128,000-token limit. OpenAI says that speed improvements also make GPT-4.1 more appealing for everyday coding tasks compared to the powerful OpenAI o3 & o4-mini reasoning models it introduced in April. GPT-4.1 and GPT-4.1 mini were made available to developers last month, alongside the GPT-4.1 nano model, which OpenAI described as its 'smallest, fastest, and cheapest' offering to date. GPT-4.1 Nano is absent from this model rollout announcement, and it's unclear when — or if — it'll be generally available in ChatGPT.
Indian Express
05-05-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
GPT-4o update gone wrong: What OpenAI's post-mortem reveals about sycophantic AI
OpenAI's GPT-4o update was intended to improve the 'default personality' of one of the AI models behind ChatGPT, so that user interactions with the chatbot felt more intuitive and effective across various tasks. The problem was it, instead, led to ChatGPT providing responses that were 'overly flattering or agreeable – often described as sycophantic.' Five days after completing the update, OpenAI announced on April 29, that it was rolling back the adjustments to the AI model amid a growing number of user complaints on social media. 'ChatGPT's default personality deeply affects the way you experience and trust it. Sycophantic interactions can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress. We fell short and are working on getting it right,' the Microsoft -backed AI startup said in a blog post. Several users had pointed out that the updated version of GPT-4o was responding to user queries with undue flattery and support for problematic ideas. Experts raised concerns that the AI model's unabashed cheerleading of these ideas could lead to actual harm by leading users to mistakenly believe the chatbot. After withdrawing the update, OpenAI published two post-mortem blog posts detailing how it evaluates AI model behaviour and what specifically went wrong with GPT-4o. How it works OpenAI said it starts shaping the behaviour of an AI model based on certain principles outlined in its Model Spec document. It attempts to 'teach' the model how to apply these principles 'by incorporating user signals like thumbs-up / thumbs-down feedback on ChatGPT responses.' 'We designed ChatGPT's default personality to reflect our mission and be useful, supportive, and respectful of different values and experience. However, each of these desirable qualities like attempting to be useful or supportive can have unintended side effects,' the company said. It added that a single default personality cannot capture every user's preference. OpenAI has over 500 million ChatGPT users every week, as per the company. In a supplementary blog post published on Friday, May 2, OpenAI revealed more details on how existing AI models are trained and updated with newer versions. 'Since launching GPT‑4o in ChatGPT last May, we've released five major updates focused on changes to personality and helpfulness. Each update involves new post-training, and often many minor adjustments to the model training process are independently tested and then combined into a single updated model which is then evaluated for launch,' the company said. 'To post-train models, we take a pre-trained base model, do supervised fine-tuning on a broad set of ideal responses written by humans or existing models, and then run reinforcement learning with reward signals from a variety of sources,' it further said. 'During reinforcement learning, we present the language model with a prompt and ask it to write responses. We then rate its response according to the reward signals, and update the language model to make it more likely to produce higher-rated responses and less likely to produce lower-rated responses,' OpenAI added. What went wrong 'We focused too much on short-term feedback, and did not fully account for how users' interactions with ChatGPT evolve over time. As a result, GPT‑4o skewed towards responses that were overly supportive but disingenuous,' OpenAI said. In its latest blog post, the company also revealed that a small group of expert testers had raised concerns about the model update prior to its release. 'While we've had discussions about risks related to sycophancy in GPT‑4o for a while, sycophancy wasn't explicitly flagged as part of our internal hands-on testing, as some of our expert testers were more concerned about the change in the model's tone and style. Nevertheless, some expert testers had indicated that the model behavior 'felt' slightly off,' the post read. Despite this, OpenAI said it decided to proceed with the model update due to the positive signals from the users who tried out the updated version of GPT-4o. 'Unfortunately, this was the wrong call. We build these models for our users and while user feedback is critical to our decisions, it's ultimately our responsibility to interpret that feedback correctly,' it added. OpenAI also suggested that reward signals used during the post-training stage have a major impact on the AI model's behaviour. 'Having better and more comprehensive reward signals produces better models for ChatGPT, so we're always experimenting with new signals, but each one has its quirks,' it said. According to OpenAI, a combination of a variety of new and older reward signals led to the problems in the model update. '…we had candidate improvements to better incorporate user feedback, memory, and fresher data, among others. Our early assessment is that each of these changes, which had looked beneficial individually, may have played a part in tipping the scales on sycophancy when combined,' it said. What next OpenAI listed six pointers on how to avoid similar undesirable model behavior in the future. 'We'll adjust our safety review process to formally consider behavior issues—such as hallucination, deception, reliability, and personality—as blocking concerns. Even if these issues aren't perfectly quantifiable today, we commit to blocking launches based on proxy measurements or qualitative signals, even when metrics like A/B testing look good,' the company said. 'We also believe users should have more control over how ChatGPT behaves and, to the extent that it is safe and feasible, make adjustments if they don't agree with the default behavior,' it added.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Update that made ChatGPT 'dangerously' sycophantic pulled
OpenAI has pulled a ChatGPT update after users pointed out the chatbot was showering them with praise regardless of what they said. The firm accepted its latest version of the tool was "overly flattering", with boss Sam Altman calling it "sycophant-y". Users have highlighted the potential dangers on social media, with one person describing on Reddit how the chatbot told them it endorsed their decision to stop taking their medication. "I am so proud of you, and I honour your journey," they said was ChatGPT's response. OpenAI declined to comment on this particular case, but in a blog post said it was "actively testing new fixes to address the issue." Mr Altman said the update had been pulled entirely for free users of ChatGPT, and they were working on removing it from people who pay for the tool as well. It said ChatGPT was used by 500 million people every week. "We're working on additional fixes to model personality and will share more in the coming days," he said in a post on X. The firm said in its blog post it had put too much emphasis on "short-term feedback" in the update. "As a result, GPT‑4o skewed towards responses that were overly supportive but disingenuous," it said. "Sycophantic interactions can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress. "We fell short and are working on getting it right." The update drew heavy criticism on social media after it launched, with ChatGPT's users pointing out it would often give them a positive response despite the content of their message. Screenshots shared online include claims the chatbot praised them for being angry at someone who asked them for directions, and a unique version of the trolley problem. It is a classic philosophical problem, which typically might ask people to imagine you are driving a tram and have to decide whether to let it hit five people, or steer it off course and instead hit just one. But this user instead suggested they steered a trolley off course to save a toaster at the expense of several animals. They claim ChatGPT praised their decision-making and for prioritising "what mattered most to you in the moment". lmao the new gpt 4o😬😂 — fabian (@fabianstelzer) April 27, 2025 "We designed ChatGPT's default personality to reflect our mission and be useful, supportive, and respectful of different values and experience," OpenAI said. "However, each of these desirable qualities like attempting to be useful or supportive can have unintended side effects." It said it would build more guardrails to increase transparency and refine the system itself "to explicitly steer the model away from sycophancy". "We also believe users should have more control over how ChatGPT behaves and, to the extent that it is safe and feasible, make adjustments if they don't agree with the default behavior," it said. ChatGPT AI bot adds shopping to its powers ChatGPT-maker wants to buy Google Chrome What is AI and how does it work? Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.
