Worse is really subjective. More limited functionality with a specific set of topics? Sure. More difficult to trick to get around said topic bans? Sure.

Worse overall? You can use chatgpt 4 and 3.5 side by side and see an obvious difference.

Your specific example seems fairly reasonable. Is there liability in saying x bolt can handle y torque if that ended up not being true? I don't know. What is that bolt causes an accident and someone dies? I'm sure a lawyer could argue that case if ChatGPT gave a bad answer.