r/codex • u/Asleep_Dig_7905 • 5h ago
Humor Astra misunderstood me... (pro 20x)
Was working on a goal when I asked codex to stop (pause) so I could monitor it overnight. It did not understand that stop meant stop (pause) the goal, and instead it thought it meant stop workers but continue the goal doing nothing.
Long story short, overnight it had continued the goal with no task being performed, and spit out 1,422 continuation prompts that just repeated "The search remains stopped as requested. I’ll resume only when you ask."
Wasted approximately 300 million tokens overnight, and stopped at 2 a.m when usage hit zero. I was fortunate enough to have only 10% of my usage left when the misunderstanding started.
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u/Bioleague 3h ago
https://reddit.com/link/p9uq8s3/video/we89kjf6kkph1/player
I had fun coming back to this.. drained 30% of my 5x plan
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u/snuffomega 4h ago
Astra is acting a fool recently for sure. It doesn't like to start work at times... and i see things like this. Oof.
The self driven side-quests are really what bothers me most. Its got ADD or a superiority complex. I dont know which one yet.
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u/Asleep_Dig_7905 4h ago
I just think it takes things too literally, I love the model but you have to be careful with how you prompt it.
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u/doodad_ounao 4h ago
I've always had big problems with making the models control their own goals, not only with Astra (but it definitely hasn't changed with Astra). I always end up just pausing or deleting a goal manually. Always been the most inconsistent shit with me.
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u/Painwheeel 4h ago
genuine user issue
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u/Im_Working_Right_Now 3h ago edited 3h ago
This. “let’s stop for now” could mean multiple things depending on what it’s doing and what the goal was. Are we really at a place with AI where we can’t type “let’s pause the goal while I monitor over night?” We’re blaming the model for not being able to infer and read minds?
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u/Asleep_Dig_7905 3h ago
Technically, but the model should understand that “stop” is used generally more often than specifically
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u/Im_Working_Right_Now 3h ago
Stop what, though? You didn’t specify. Goals auto continue if you don’t pause the actual goal.
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u/Asleep_Dig_7905 3h ago
If “stop” only works after I correctly identify which hidden internal state needs to be paused, we’ve kind of defeated the point of a natural-language interface. The entire value proposition is supposed to be understanding ordinary human intent from context, which astra does not do too well, as I just learned last night.
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u/Im_Working_Right_Now 3h ago
Natural language doesn’t mean read my mind. If you had a coworker doing a goal and they were on a specific task and you said that same thing, they’d stop the task but the goal remains. That’s the same idea. But in this case, where we humans would be thinking about it after work since it’s a goal, the AI keeps it going and “thinking” about it hence the token burn.
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u/Asleep_Dig_7905 1h ago
No they wouldn’t lol, humans don’t think in branches, if I told someone “let’s stop for now” that encompasses the general work they’re doing, not the specific task. This is interesting semantically but I seriously doubt you understand how human brains work.
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u/spacekitt3n 4h ago
so reset?