undefined | Better HN

0 pointshackerlight2y ago0 comments

> ChatGPT is inferior to the API/local products, especially if you know some Python.

Why is this? GPT-4 outperforms smaller models I can run locally. Is GPT-4 via API better than GPT-4 via webapp?

0 comments

w42y ago

Yes, for a couple of reasons:

- I control the system prompt to guide the model to do exactly what I want, rather than begging and cajoling ChatGPT. I will often use the API playground for this reason where someone else might use ChatGPT.

- For more complex problems, having the input and output in Python gives me a ton of options for data manipulation, storage, etc.

- Using an API call lets me daisy chain different models and other APIs/tools together. ChatGPT can sort of do this via plugins, but I haven't found it to be a great experience.

GPT-4 is definitely better than the local models by itself. It's not a clear winner when you start to get into fine-tuning/ensemble workflows. It's also less attractive in situations where I want to chew through a ton of tokens for a personal project and GPT-4 would get expensive.

hackerlightOP2y ago

> daisy chain different models and other APIs/tools together

> ensemble workflows

This is intriguing, can you explain in more detail what this looks like?

CuriouslyC2y ago

Look up langchain. You can have most models format output in such a way as to facilitate programmatic execution based on their contents, and you can let the model just run that way with some checks to keep it from losing the plot.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse