Waiting for a LLM which learnt how to critically think.
Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
141–150 of 560 posts
Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
#142Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
#1431. Gemini is better at this. It will predicate any follow-up question you pose to it with a paragraph about how amazing and insightful you are. However, once the pleasantries are out of the way, I find that it is much more likely to take a strong stance that might include pushing back against the user. I recently tried to attain some knowledge on a topic I knew nothing about and ChatGPT just kept running with my slig…
I've had Gemini say you're absolutely right when I misunderstood something, then explain why I'm actually wrong (the user seems to think xyz, however abc...), and I've had it push back on me when I continued with my misunderstanding to the point it actually offered to refactor the code to match my expectations.
Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
#144I'm pretty sure they want it kissing people's asses because it makes users feel good and therefore more likely to use the LLM more. Versus, if it just gave a curt and unfriendly answer, most people (esp. Americans) wouldn't like to use it as much. Just a hypothesis.
> Versus, if it just gave a curt and unfriendly answer, most people (esp. Americans) I don’t see this as an American thing. It’s an extension of the current Product Management trend to give software quirky and friendly personality. You can see the trend in more than LLM output. It’s in their desktop app that has “Good Morning” and other prominent greetings. Claude Code has quirky status output like “Bamboozling” and…
It most definitely is a American thing - this is why non-native speakers often come out as rude or unfriendly or plain stupid.
We don't appreciate how much there is to language.
Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
#145Someone will make a fortune by doubling down on this a making a personal AI that just keeps telling people how right and awesome they are ad infinitum.
That persons name rhymes with tam saltman
Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
#146I'm starting to think this is a deeper problem with LLMs that will be hard to solve with stylistic changes. If you ask it to never say "you're absolutely right" and always challenge, then it will dutifully obey, and always challenge - even when you are, in fact, right. What you really want is "challenge me when I'm wrong, and tell me I'm right if I am" - which seems to be a lot harder. As another example, one common…
I'm more reminded of Tom Scott's talk at the Royal Institution "There is no Algorithm for Truth"[0].
A lot of what you're talking about is the ability to detect Truth, or even truth!
Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
#147I'm pretty sure they want it kissing people's asses because it makes users feel good and therefore more likely to use the LLM more. Versus, if it just gave a curt and unfriendly answer, most people (esp. Americans) wouldn't like to use it as much. Just a hypothesis.
I believe this reflects the euphemization of the english language in US, a concept that George Carlin discussed many years ago [1]. As he put it, "we don't die, we pass away" or "we are not broke, we have negative cash flow". Many non-English speakers find these terms to be nonsensical.
Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
#148Best comment in the thread (after a lengthy discussion):
"I'm always absolutely right. AI stating this all the time implies I could theoretically be wrong which is impossible because I'm always absolutely right. Please make it stop."
Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want an AI modeled after short-tempered stereotypical Germans or Eastern Europeans, not copying the attitude of non-confrontational Californians that say “dude, that’s awesome!” a dozen times a day. And I mean that unironically.
While you are not alone, all evidence points to the vast majority of people preferring "yes men" as their advisors. Often to their eventual harm.
One would think that if AI was as good at coding as they tell us it is a style toggle would take all of five, ten minutes tops.
Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
#150I've spent a lot of time trying to get LLM to generate things in a specific way, the biggest take away I have is, if you tell it "don't do xyz" it will always have in the back of its mind "do xyz" and any chance it gets it will take to "do xyz"
When working on art projects, my trick is to specifically give all feedback constructively, carefully avoiding framing things in terms of the inverse or parts to remove.