[dead]
AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
431–440 of 684 posts
Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
#432It feels like I'm fighting uphill battle when it comes to bouncing ideas off of a model. I'll set things up in the context with instructions similar to. "Help me refine my ideas, challenge, push back, and don't just be agreeable." It works for a bit but eventually the conversation creeps back into complacency and syncophancy. I'll check it too by asking "are you just placating me?" the funny thing is that often it'll…
> I'll check it too by asking "are you just placating me?" the funny thing is that often it'll admit that, yes, it wasn't being very critical, and then procede to over correct and become a complete contrarian. and not in a way that's useful either. It's not admitting anything. Your question diverts it down a path where it acts the part of a former sycophant who is now being critical, because that question is now upst…
> it'll admit that, yes, it wasn't being very critical, and then procede to over correct and become a complete contrarian
Which is also placating you
Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'll check it too by asking "are you just placating me?" the funny thing is that often it'll admit that, yes, it wasn't being very critical, and then procede to over correct and become a complete contrarian. and not in a way that's useful either. It's not admitting anything. Your question diverts it down a path where it acts the part of a former sycophant who is now being critical, because that question is now upst…
An alternate way of thinking about it is LLMs have no reflection capability. Literally any “reflection” it claims to have about its decision making is made up. It has absolutely no way know that what it said was based on some ancient proverb, the phase of the moon or cold hard rational thought.
[dead]
Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
#434It feels like I'm fighting uphill battle when it comes to bouncing ideas off of a model. I'll set things up in the context with instructions similar to. "Help me refine my ideas, challenge, push back, and don't just be agreeable." It works for a bit but eventually the conversation creeps back into complacency and syncophancy. I'll check it too by asking "are you just placating me?" the funny thing is that often it'll…
I haven't found that work at all. But the way I usually frame it for this is that I present it as someone else's work that I disagree with (sometimes "this is a junior engineer's work and he often does dumb shit" as an introduction to an essay). In this way, it tries to be agreeable with me and can rationalize various opposition. And then I can select from that.
Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a good theory. My theory is, for whatever reason, jaded, narcissistic, miserable people congregate in r/AITA and try to drag other people into their misery because that’s easier than accepting responsibility and doing something to change.
Before Reddit made hiding profiles easy you'd click on a user's unreasonably scorched earth advice to the OP, and find their post history is essentially going to every story they come across and advocating for scorched earth.
Hiding profiles has genuinely made the platform profoundly worse. It's impossible to tell if you've just got a troll on your hands or someone who's making a good faith argument. It used to be enough to check their profile, and either downvote and move on, or engage with someone on a human level.
Now everyone is a troll/bot by default unless proven otherwise.
Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
#436> They also included 2,000 prompts based on posts from the Reddit community r/AmITheAsshole, where the consensus of Redditors was that the poster was indeed in the wrong. Sorry, anonymous people on reddit aren't a good comparison. This needs to be studied against people in real life who have a social contract of some sort, because that's what the LLM is imitating, and that's who most people would go to otherwise. Obv…
Reddit is notorious for being awful at real life interactions
just look at the relationship subreddit the first answer is always divorce, it’s become a meme
but beyond romantic relationships, i think a lot of us have seen how it can impact work relationships, i’ve had venture partners clearly rely on AI (robotic email responses and even SMS) and that warped their perception and made it harder to connect. It signals laziness and a lack of emotional intelligence
AI should enhance and enable connection, not promote isolation, imo this is a real problem
it should spark curiosity, create openings for conversations, point out the biases to make us better at connecting with other people, i hope we get to a point where most people are made kinder by ai. I’m seeing the opposite atm, interested in hearing others experiences with this
Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe this. There is a graph somewhere of the relationship subs tending towards breaking up over time.
I don't think this is necessarily that the advice is getting worse. My friends are pretty mature and stable people and I've found that they've had way more issues staying in relationships longer than they should've compared to breaking up earlier. Especially for relationships earlier in people's lives (where many people I know has a story about being in a relationship for way longer than they should've and seems ofte…
> I've found that they've had way more issues staying in relationships longer than they should've compared to breaking up earlier
Consider that if ending a relationship causes noticeable problems to external observers, it’s almost by definition because you were in it “too long”. That is you developed a strong attachment, shared assets, or had kids with what was in hindsight obviously the wrong person.
Essentially you can know which relationships a person stayed in too long, but you can’t know how things would have worked out in relationships people ended too early.
Also it’s probably good advice to tell a 19 year old to break up with her boyfriend over a half dozen serious red flag issues, but that’s not the only kind of thing Reddit relationship advice is generally dealing with. It’s not even the majority. If you’re advice is always to beak up over every petty difference or minor slight, you might reduce the number of people who stay in bad relationships, but your advice, if taken, would make good long term relationships impossible.
Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
#438> They also included 2,000 prompts based on posts from the Reddit community r/AmITheAsshole, where the consensus of Redditors was that the poster was indeed in the wrong. Sorry, anonymous people on reddit aren't a good comparison. This needs to be studied against people in real life who have a social contract of some sort, because that's what the LLM is imitating, and that's who most people would go to otherwise. Obv…
Reddit is notorious for being awful at real life interactions just look at the relationship subreddit the first answer is always divorce, it’s become a meme but beyond romantic relationships, i think a lot of us have seen how it can impact work relationships, i’ve had venture partners clearly rely on AI (robotic email responses and even SMS) and that warped their perception and made it harder to connect. It signals l…
I always find it interesting how, in Reddit any trivial fight or even just different opinions, the advice it's always to end the relationship.
Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sorry, anonymous people on reddit aren't a good comparison. Yeah especially on r/AmITheAsshole. Those comments never advocate for communication, forgiveness and mending things with family.
Well, because that's never the correct choice. There's a big big filter on people actually posting there. Any easy problems with obvious solutions never make it to there. Think about it, how fucked does your relationship have to be to post on Reddit for advice?
when people post there it’s for the self justification
Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit is notorious for being awful at real life interactions just look at the relationship subreddit the first answer is always divorce, it’s become a meme but beyond romantic relationships, i think a lot of us have seen how it can impact work relationships, i’ve had venture partners clearly rely on AI (robotic email responses and even SMS) and that warped their perception and made it harder to connect. It signals l…
I always find it interesting how, in Reddit any trivial fight or even just different opinions, the advice it's always to end the relationship.
You deserve better