> It's surprising to me how much LLM "personality" seems to matter to people, more than actual capability. > I do turn to Anthropic for ideation and non-tech things. But I find little reason to use it over codex for engineering tasks. Sometimes for planning, but even there, 5.4 is more critical of my questionable ideas, and will often come up with simpler ways to do things (especially when prompted), which I appreciate.

Aren't you saying here that the LLM personality matters to you, too? Being critical of you is a personality attribute, not a capabilities one.

Not necessarily. Criticism is the analysis, evaluation, or judgment of the qualities of something. This is a matter of intellectual act. However, you could say that being habitually critical can be partly a result of "personality" or temperament.

(Of course, strictly speaking, LLMs have neither temperament, "personality", nor intellect, but we understand these terms are used in an analogical or figurative fashion.)