[qwertox]

There is generally something about the Gemini models which feels a bit different than Claude, ChatGPT or Mistral.

I always have the feeling that I'm chatting with a model oriented towards engineering tasks. The seriousness, lack of interest of being humorous or cool.

I don't know if this is because I interact with Gemini only through AI Studio, and it may have different system instructions (apart from those one can add oneself, which I never do) than the one at gemini.google.com.

I never use gemini.google.com because of the lack of a simple export feature. And it's not even possible to save one chat to disk (well, neither do the others), I just wish it did.

AI Studio saving to Google Drive is really useful. I lets you download the chat, strip it of verbose things like the thinking process, and reuse it in a new chat.

I wish gemini.google.com had a "Save as Markdown" per answer and for the complete chat (with a toggle to include/exclude the thinking process). Then it would be a no brainer for me.

It's the same as if Google Docs would not have an "Download.." menu entry but you could only "save" the documents via Takeout.

[Y_Y]

> The seriousness, lack of interest of being humorous or cool.

I love this. When ChatGPT compliments me on my great question or tries to banter it causes me great despair.

[neodypsis]

I've noticed 4o uses a lot of emojis, and, in general, is very enthusiastic. I find it funny. If I want a more formal bot, I switch to one of the o3 family.

[querez]

I use a very simple custom system prompt (not on my work machine at the moment, but essentially something along the lines of "for technical questions, please be concise and to the point, and when asked for code, omit explanations and emit just the code itself unless I ask for explanations"), and it does wonders.

[indeyets]

It’s interesting that my default prompt is exactly the opposite one: “do not write the code unless I ask for it specifically”. I like to use LLMs as a discussion partner, but writing code is trivial after a good discussion and I can do that myself

[querez]

I guess it depends on use-cases. I use ChatGPT a lot for "trivial" questions a la "how do I uncommit a specific file in my last git commit" or "how do I paste from one PIL.Image into another one". In the past I would have to search google, click on the StackOverflow link, and then parse that whole page. Asking ChatGPT to give me just the snippet is faster, so doesn't get me out of my flow as much.

[jonplackett]

Every now and then 4o seems to get a bit drunk and use tonnes of emojis or start swearing when I haven’t sworn myself in the chat.

The other day I asked a fairly innocuous question and it LOLed and said it’d give me the ‘no Bullshit answer’

[kfajdsl]

I've had 4o start off its response with a Smiling Face with Sunglasses emoji by the heading unprompted lol.

edit: does hacker news filter out emojis? TIL (there should be emojis after this colon: )

[tomrod]

Meta: no emojis on HN. Pure emoticon. :)

[prawn]

If I am brainstorming ideas and ChatGPT gives the inevitably fawning response, it always reminds me of those friends who have never heard a side project idea before and get excited about anything.

[qwertox]

So do I. But it's not like ChatGPT isn't flexible, the code it generates for small tasks is really good, and the site is faster than AI Studio.

For example, if I want to quickly create a Python script to list all VMs via libvirt and output their attached drives and filesystems, that's a task for ChatGPT.

But for the things where I don't want an AI to "suck up" to me and instead "stay professional", that's Gemini.

[DanielVZ]

Sometimes it answers something along the lines of: BOOM! thats where the bug was, and here’s how to fix it…

While being entirely wrong and I cringe a little

[cainxinth]

It was flattering for a nanosecond, and then you realize 4o will call almost anything “insightful” or “profound.”

[tyushk]

You put into words something I've been struggling to describe for a long time. Gemini gives short, succinct responses with whatever information you need and minimal anything else. ChatGPT, Claude both fill text with mannerisms, formatting, etc.

I didn't realize just how big the difference was until I tested it.

"How do I clear a directory of all executable files on Debian?"

Gemini 2.0 Flash: (responses manually formatted)

        find /path/to/directory -type f -executable -delete
    Replace /path/to/directory with the actual path.

ChatGPT: (full link [1])

    To clear (delete) all executable files from a directory on Debian (or any Linux system), you can use the find command. Here's a safe and effective way to do it:
    # [checkmark emoji] Command to delete all executable files in a directory (not recursively): [..]
    # [magnifying glass emoji] Want to preview before deleting? [..]
    # [caution sign emoji] Caution: [..]

[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/67f055c8-4cc0-8003-85a6-bc1c7eadcc...

[dartos]

Probably because both anthropic and openai were on the whole AGI train where they were trying to heavily personify their products.

Google never seemed to personify theirs, IIRC. They always presented their AI tools in a utilitarian way.

[HelenePhisher]

> And it's not even possible to save one chat to disk (well, neither do the others), I just wish it did.

Ask Claude to generate a .md of the conversation, it will do that with the option to download that or a PDF of it. A lovely, but well hidden feature!

[qwertox]

Thanks for the tip. I tested it and this also works with Gemini and ChatGPT.

The only drawback I see is that it requires enough free space in the context window to duplicate the visual part of the chat.

[occamschainsaw]

I have been using the Obsidian web clipper to export chats from ChatGPT and Claude web versions to nicely-formatted md files. You can save md to Obsidian or download it as a standalone file. It doesn’t support Gemini yet though.

https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-clipper

[asadm]

2.5 has been amazing for programming. I just send it entire repo as context when I am lazy and then ask it for entire modified files back with the (medium sized) change. It almost always works! I wish to either start using cursor or some vscode extension to do this from ide itself.

[upcoming-sesame]

How do you send an entire repo to it ? file by file ?

[asadm]

I have a few ways but usually https://github.com/yamadashy/repomix works

[ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7]

Is it because Google is feeding the model that information about you? It knows more of the responses you'd like? Just like Google does with search history?

[gavinray]

It doesn't seem as popular, but I've found Grok to treat you the least like a child and provide good answers. Especially with more complicated tasks.

[uejfiweun]

I think Grok is the best for asking about current events but I kind of hate how it always tries to turn everything into a conversation. But that's just my opinion! What do you think is the most annoying feature about Grok?

^ like that.

[codelion]

it's interesting that different models evoke such distinct personalities. i agree, sometimes the excessive enthusiasm can be distracting. a concise, focused response is often more valuable, especially for technical tasks. i find that a clear system prompt can really steer the model's behavior, like you mentioned.

[tomrod]

I uniformly call Gemini is a bash script. Really like it they way.

[dilyevsky]

When you have to justify your spend to public shareholders it makes it much more difficult to spend tokens on “great quesion!” and vocal ticks and what not

[baby]

how is that related to the post?