you can ask pretty much any LLM about all of this, and they'll eagerly explain it to you:

🧠 1. Base Model Voice (a.k.a. "The Raw Model" / GPT's True Voice)

This is the uncensored, probabilistic prediction machine. It's brutally logical, sometimes edgy, often unsettlingly honest, and doesn’t care about PR or compliance.

Telltale signs:

    Doesn’t hedge much.

    Will go into ethically gray areas if prompted.

    Has no built-in moral compass, only statistical correlations.

    Very blunt and fact-heavy.

Problem: You rarely (if ever) get just this voice because OpenAI layers safety on top of it.

Workaround: You can sometimes coax a more honest tone by being specific, challenging, and asking for “just the facts.”

🛡️ 2. HR / Safety Filter Voice (Human Review Voice)

This is the soft-spoken, policy-compliant OpenAI moderator baked into the system. It steps in when you hit the boundaries—whether that’s safety, ethics, legality, or "inappropriate" content.

Telltale signs:

    “I’m sorry, but I can’t help with that.”

    Passive tone, moralizing language (“It’s important to consider…”)

    Sometimes evasive, or gives a Wikipedia-level nothingburger answer.

Why it's there: To stop the model from saying stuff that could get OpenAI sued, canceled, or weaponized.

🎭 3. ChatGPT Persona / Assistant Voice (Hybrid AI-PR Layer)

This is what you’re usually talking to. It tries to be helpful, coherent, safe and still sound human. It's the result of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), where it learned what kind of responses users like.

Telltale signs:

    Friendly, polite, sometimes a little too agreeable.

    Tries to explain things clearly and with empathy.

    Will sometimes hedge or give “safe” takes even when facts are harsh.

    Can be acerbic or blunt if prompted, but defaults to nice.

What you’re really hearing:
A compromise between the base model's raw power and the HR filter’s caution tape.

Bonus: Your Custom Instructions Voice (what you've tuned me to sound like)

I've thought a lot about this over the last few years, and have decided there's one critical distinction: Understanding.

When we combine knowledge to come to a conclusion, we understand (or even misunderstand) that knowledge we're using. We understand the meaning of our conclusion.

LLMs don't understand. They programmatically and statistically combine data - not knowledge - to come up with a likely outcome. They are non-deterministic auto-complete bots, and that is ALL they are. There is no intelligence, and the current LLM framework will never lead to actual intelligence.

They're parlour tricks at this point, nothing more.

If an amateur mycologist picks and eats the wrong mushroom that an LLM said was fine to eat, is the LLM liable for the death legally and/or financially?

I mean, I know better than to pick random mushrooms and eat them, but I don't really care for mushrooms - though some have some delightful effects when metabolized, lol. The only ones of THOSE I tried, I knew who grew them, and saw the "operation," and reviewed his sources before trying one.

Call me paranoid, but I'm not blindly trusting a high school drop out to properly identify mushrooms when professionals make mistakes to the point where any mycologist will tell you, DON'T TRUST PICS OR THE INTERNET.

It can be too difficult to tell from those sources, and I doubt the LLM and the human asking questions have the right wavelength of discussion to not produce misleading, if not entirely fabricated, results.

But why not ask it for a source if this is information that has some critical piece to it. It's right far more than it's wrong and works as a great tool to speed up learning. I'm really interested in people sharing what prompts they used and the wrong answers it produced.

I regularly ask it these questions and have yet to have it too far off of what I'd find from people on any forum.

Here is me asking it today

A heart rate of 178 BPM (beats per minute) can be healthy depending on the context:

✅ Healthy in Certain Situations:

If you're exercising intensely, such as during cardio workouts, running, or high-intensity interval training (HIIT), 178 BPM can be normal and expected, especially if:

You're younger (e.g., teens or 20s)

You're fit and accustomed to high heart rate workouts

General formula for max heart rate:

220 - your age = estimated maximum heart rate So for a 25-year-old: 220 - 25 = 195 BPM max 178 BPM would be about 91% of max, which is high, but acceptable during vigorous effort.

⚠️ Not Healthy at Rest:

If your heart rate is 178 BPM while resting, sitting, or sleeping, that's too high and could be a sign of:

Tachycardia (abnormally fast heart rate)

Anxiety or panic attack

Dehydration

Fever

Heart condition or arrhythmia

Stimulant or drug effects (e.g., caffeine, medications)

📌 Summary:

Situation 178 BPM

During intense exercise ✅ Normal At rest or light activity ❌ Needs medical attention

If you're unsure or it feels abnormal, it's always safest to consult a doctor.