Why has gpt-4-1106-preview slowed down and why is Chinese response speed slower than English?

Below is an explanation addressing the behavior you’re observing:

What’s Happening

• Model Updates:
  The fingerprints you’re recording indicate that OpenAI has updated the preview version (gpt-4-1106-preview) you’re using. In a preview environment, changes—both on the backend and in model optimizations—are common. These updates may include trade-offs that can affect latency and throughput. The slowdown you’re observing (from ~30 tokens/sec to ~10 tokens/sec) aligns with these changes, and improvements may come as the new version is finalized.

• Language-specific Performance:
  The difference in speed between English and Chinese responses is likely related to how the model tokenizes and processes these languages. Because tokenization and internal optimizations can differ by language, it’s possible that processing Chinese text incurs more overhead than English. This behavior isn’t necessarily an error in your code but rather reflects differences in the model’s handling of various languages.

Your Code is Fine

Your simple LangChain implementation using:

PYTHONCopied
llm = OpenAI(model_name=_self.openai_model, temperature=0, streaming=True)
chain = ConversationChain(llm=llm, memory=memory, verbose=True)
chain.run("xxxxxx")

remains valid. The performance change is more likely due to adjustments in the underlying model rather than an issue with your integration.

What to Expect

• Performance in the Final Release:
  It is common for OpenAI to test and adjust parameters in preview models. As they iterate on the model, both latency and efficiency may improve before or after the official release. Keep an eye on OpenAI’s announcements or update logs because performance improvements are often part of model enhancements in upcoming releases.

• Monitoring Updates:
  Continue monitoring the model fingerprint and any related release notes. If there are any performance regressions that persist or become a significant issue, providing feedback to OpenAI might help them address these concerns in further updates.

Summary

The observed speed decrease and language-specific performance differences are likely due to recent backend updates in the preview version of gpt-4-turbo rather than an issue in your code. As OpenAI works toward a release version, you can expect that overall performance (including latency) may improve again.

Feel free to ask further questions if you need more technical details on optimizing your integration!