My layman’s view is that this issue was primarily due to the fact that 4o is no longer their flagship model.

Similar to the Ford Mustang, much of the performance efforts are on the higher trims, while the base trims just get larger and louder engines, because that’s what users want.

With presumably everyone at OpenAI primarily using the newest models (o3), the updates to the base user model have been further automated with thumbs up/thumbs down.

This creates a vicious feedback loop, where the loudest users want models that agree with them (bigger engines!) without the other improvements (tires, traction control, etc.) — leading to more crashes and a reputation for unsafe behavior.