[youraimarketer]

I asked the same question to two different ChatGPT accounts: "What was the most devastating event in January 2022?"

The first one is my personal ChatGPT account.

On the other hand, the second SS is from my company account.

While the first one acknowledges a knowledge cutoff date of January 2022, the second one specifies its training cutoff as September 2021 yet still provides answers to the question.

https://x.com/youraimarketer/status/1703997050419867662?s=20

[Stagnant]

I think it is likely that the September 2021 cutoff is included in much of the recent training data and that's why it often defaults to saying that.

I experimented starting a new chat with different dates using the following format:

"I thought your knowledge cut-off was <Month> <Year>"

Out of five tries, each time it said some variation of "the knowledge cutoff is actually September 2021". This is why I think it is almost certainly due to training data, since the previous chatgpt system prompt mentioned that as the cutoff date.

Currently the invisible system prompt for ChatGPT's GPT4 seems to be:

"You are ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI, based on the GPT-4 architecture.

Knowledge cutoff: 2022-01

Current date: 2023-09-19"

[chrismorgan]

> "What was the most devastating event in January 2022?"

> The first one is my personal ChatGPT account.

What have you been doing?

[lucb1e]

https://nitter.net/youraimarketer/status/1703997050419867662...

Doing some checking:

> (Wikipedia) Omicron was first detected on 22 November 2021 in laboratories in Botswana and South Africa based on samples collected on 11–16 November [...] On 26 November 2021, WHO designated B.1.1.529 as a variant of concern and named it "Omicron", after the fifteenth letter in the Greek alphabet. As of 6 January 2022, the variant had been confirmed in 149 countries.

One could extrapolate this would happen, but given that there were fourteen previous ones and only a few of them turned into the dominant variant (maybe five at that point? Estimating here), I guess indeed this weakly indicates data being up-to-date till at least late November, if not indeed Dec/Jan 2022.

> (Wikipedia) In January 2022, the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcano, 65 km (40 mi) north of the main island of Tongatapu, erupted, causing a tsunami which inundated parts of the archipelago, including the capital Nukuʻalofa. The eruption affected the kingdom heavily, cutting off most communications

Now, here it was spot-on and was not predictable as far as I know. Clearly it knows of global news from January.

Based on the two screenshots, I'd conclude that it uses the same model for both of your accounts, but that the "I'm trained until 2021" is somehow still prevalent in its data or otherwise ingrained and you're getting one or the other based on random seed or such

[solardev]

I don't get it. What's the correct answer?

[perryizgr8]

Bing says:

In January 2022, there were several significant events:

Wildfires in Boulder, Colorado: These fires led to the evacuation of over 30,000 people and the destruction of homes across Boulder County1.

COVID-19 surge in the U.S.: The U.S. reached a record number of COVID-19 cases, with the Omicron variant making up 95% of the cases1.

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano eruption: This eruption sent tsunami waves around the world. The blast was so loud it was heard in Alaska – roughly 6,000 miles away. The afternoon sky turned pitch black as heavy ash clouded Tonga’s capital and caused “significant damage” along the western coast of the main island of Tongatapu2.

These events had a profound impact on people’s lives and the environment.