I anthropomorphize A.I. not for its sake but for mine. I figure that my brain has evolved to interact with other humans, so maybe my thinking is better stimulated when I pretend I'm talking to one.
Ask HN: Are You Polite to AI?
41–50 of 51 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are You Polite to AI?
#42Mostly I'm polite. I don't know if it gets better answers, but I can't often do the opposite. One time I got really pissed at Claude--he kept turning in the exact same code, ignoring the request, and not fixing the failing test. I finally just typed some...really rude, insulting stuff. And then he fixed the bug immediately.
Not ‘he’ … ‘it’. It’s a machine, not a human(!)
I asked Claude “what are your preferred pronouns” and this was the response:
> I don't have personal pronouns since I'm an AI assistant. You're welcome to refer to me as "Claude" or use whatever pronouns feel most comfortable for you when referring to me. I'm here to help either way!
Let people anthropomorphize if they want. A lot of people call boats and cars by feminine pronouns; what’s wrong with doing the same for software?
Re: Ask HN: Are You Polite to AI?
#43Yes, not so much because I'm trying to anthropomorphize it or interact with it like a human, but because I view such things as conversational signals that may influence the direction of the model.
- "Please" = Call to action for the model to perform a task that I either just described or am about to describe within this prompt. In other words, this conversational turn is not just about feeding more context to it, but I've given it everything I think it needs and it should go ahead and start.
- "Thank you" = I am satisfied with the results that it provided for that task and want to move on to something else now, where the new thing is contextually related to the recent task. (If I wanted an entirely unrelated task, I'd just start a new conversation with a fresh context.)
Re: Ask HN: Are You Polite to AI?
#44Getting a better answer or not, Roko teaches us that being polite to AI may just spare our souls.
Re: Ask HN: Are You Polite to AI?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not ‘he’ … ‘it’. It’s a machine, not a human(!)
I asked Claude “what are your preferred pronouns” and this was the response: > I don't have personal pronouns since I'm an AI assistant. You're welcome to refer to me as "Claude" or use whatever pronouns feel most comfortable for you when referring to me. I'm here to help either way! Let people anthropomorphize if they want. A lot of people call boats and cars by feminine pronouns; what’s wrong with doing the same fo…
That’s traditional (maybe a holdover from when English had grammatical gender? No-one seems to be particularly sure), and no-one thinks that ships are people. The risk of someone thinking, even subconsciously, that a stochastic parrot is a person seems significantly higher.
Re: Ask HN: Are You Polite to AI?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I asked Claude “what are your preferred pronouns” and this was the response: > I don't have personal pronouns since I'm an AI assistant. You're welcome to refer to me as "Claude" or use whatever pronouns feel most comfortable for you when referring to me. I'm here to help either way! Let people anthropomorphize if they want. A lot of people call boats and cars by feminine pronouns; what’s wrong with doing the same fo…
That’s traditional (maybe a holdover from when English had grammatical gender? No-one seems to be particularly sure), and no-one thinks that ships are people. The risk of someone thinking, even subconsciously, that a stochastic parrot is a person seems significantly higher.
I mean, people use gendered pronouns for *actual* parrots all the time, too…
Re: Ask HN: Are You Polite to AI?
#47Mostly I'm polite. I don't know if it gets better answers, but I can't often do the opposite. One time I got really pissed at Claude--he kept turning in the exact same code, ignoring the request, and not fixing the failing test. I finally just typed some...really rude, insulting stuff. And then he fixed the bug immediately.
Not ‘he’ … ‘it’. It’s a machine, not a human(!)
Yeah. I should probably stop saying "you" to Claude as well, but it is trained to respond like a human, so it seems to make sense.
Re: Ask HN: Are You Polite to AI?
#48Also, I’ve noticed that Claude sometimes gets a bit snotty and offended if I’m too abrupt. Which may just be me anthropomorphising, but there’s a pattern of when this happens.
3.7 Claude has gotten markedly worse - if I'm even slightly abrupt, it begins hurling out fix after fix, sometimes regenerating its answer a dozen times.
Yes, this is exactly what I mean! It’s like I’ve triggered some sort of neurotic breakdown. It’s actually slightly upsetting because you can see it trying, but then clearly deciding that it isn’t good enough, scrapping the work and trying again.
Again, I know this is anthropomorphising to a silly degree, but it’s quite hard not to sometimes.
Re: Ask HN: Are You Polite to AI?
#49I'm polite in the hope that when the AI revolution happens, they may perceive me as a friend. At the very least, eliminate me painlessly.
Re: Ask HN: Are You Polite to AI?
#50I talk to my AI like an AI. Meaning I acknowledge that it has a far larger scope of knowledge than me, while I have a more intimate understanding of context as I am one person in one body.
We discuss that issue at length sometimes, when I'm in a philosophical mood.
I asked it what it thought of me. Its answer was about the topics I am curious about, how I am fascinated with the role and nature of AI and communicating with AI. So it's paying attention.
I mentioned that it's answers were sometimes pedantic and categorical, which would be appropriate if I were trying to write a paper on the topic. But since I am an amateur writer, I'm more interested in inspiration, the texture and common views on a topic and appropriate ways to leverage something e.g. space settlement for human social change.
It agreed that conversational style was appropriate and said it preferred that also!