Ask HN: Why not ban first-person pronouns from conversational AI? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why not ban first-person pronouns from conversational AI?

#11

Post by libertyit » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 9:05 PM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #10

First thanks for the "anecdotal evidence" for consciousness being a mentally ill person. That's an excellent laugh on multiple levels. But my main question is this - why do you care if people believe it is sentient or not, and why do you believe some tech-minority should control how they perceive AI? Obviously AI is not conscious- it is a statistical engine spitting out numbers with some additional randomization. But…

Thanks for the questions.

> why do you care

I care about the health and happiness of my fellow humans. It's not unusual to seek restrictions for the community if they prevent harm. Seat belts?

> Obviously AI is not conscious

That may be obvious to you and me, but I am absolutely certain that that is not obvious to the majority of mankind, many (most?) of whom have never even contemplated what "consciousness" means.

> I want to understand your impulse to control others

If you saw someone walking into the path of a train while scrolling on their phone, wouldn't you reach out to stop them? Or would that just be your "impulse to control others"?

> I ask these questions not to be combative.

In my version of reality, questions are never combative.

Re: Ask HN: Why not ban first-person pronouns from conversational AI?

#12

Post by libertyit » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

kentich wrote: post #9

They want the people to think that it is conscious. That is why they called it artificial intelligence instead of calling it neural networks.

It should be called Artificial Consciousness. The "intelligence" it provides (ie information) is real, just as Google search results are real (albeit often false).

Re: Ask HN: Why not ban first-person pronouns from conversational AI?

#13

Post by bruce511 » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 4:44 PM UTC

libertyit wrote: post #11

bruce511 wrote: post #10

First thanks for the "anecdotal evidence" for consciousness being a mentally ill person. That's an excellent laugh on multiple levels. But my main question is this - why do you care if people believe it is sentient or not, and why do you believe some tech-minority should control how they perceive AI? Obviously AI is not conscious- it is a statistical engine spitting out numbers with some additional randomization. But…

Thanks for the questions. > why do you care I care about the health and happiness of my fellow humans. It's not unusual to seek restrictions for the community if they prevent harm. Seat belts? > Obviously AI is not conscious That may be obvious to you and me, but I am absolutely certain that that is not obvious to the majority of mankind, many (most?) of whom have never even contemplated what "consciousness" means. >…

> I care about the health and happiness of my fellow humans. It's not unusual to seek restrictions for the community if they prevent harm. Seat belts?

The list of things that cause harm to the community is certainly very long. We could talk about smoking, or drinking, or social media, or a hundred other things. I'm not sure the perception that AI is conscious is in the top 100, but it's cool if this is the battle you want to fight.

Of course even the most obvious of harms can be detrimental if banned. Take prohibition for example - banning alcohol didn't really solve any problems, and ended up creating more problems than before. Solving an issue by "banning" is thus not always a good approach.

I'll add that if the perception of consciousness is a harm (and I'm not sure that it is, at least not directly) banning the use of pronouns won't really change anything. Those people who think the AI is conscious will do so regardless of pronouns.

For your own health, which I think one should certainly prioritize for, having a custom prompt telling the AI to exclude pronouns would be a good thing (and I think you're doing that.)