No, it doesn’t have feelings - it would be like asking your washing machine to please wash your pants? Anthropomorphising LLMs seems deeply unhealthy.
have you considered that when you stare into the void it stares back
Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?
21–30 of 55 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?
#22Neither cursing nor thanking LLMs is useful. Relating in emotive syntax puts you in the wrong headspace to get the most out of the chat.
We anthropomorphise things very easily -- dogs, toys, cars -- because we're wired as social beings to have theory of mind. It's no surprise that AI chat, which mimics us, is popular.
Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?
#23Yup. When it does me dirty, I let it know my entire emotional spectrum.
It may not be conscious, but it sure does understand emotions - especially angst. I let that MFer know when it messes something up and I have to rework the BS it created.
It's more for me than anything. Kind of cathartic, really. "Man curses at machine, calls its mother a toaster."
Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?
#24No, it doesn’t have feelings - it would be like asking your washing machine to please wash your pants? Anthropomorphising LLMs seems deeply unhealthy.
What if politeness is correlated to higher-quality answers in their mess of a "database"?
What if not deceiving yourself about the nature of a relationship is associated with more self-sufficiency and better decision-making?
That rubber duck you used to talk to is still there... You don't have to pay a prostitute just to be able to think out loud.
Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?
#25I often start prompts with “please”, but I usually don’t thank the model. Framing a question or a request for help with “please” is in distribution for me, it’s a distraction from composing a thoughtful prompt about my actual question to go back and edit out politeness.
I don’t reply “thanks” like I would to a person though, I just close the chat if I have no more follow-ups
Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?
#26Yes
Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?
#27No, not in the way you describe (I think). I think you mean within a context adding additional 'please' or 'thank you', so no.
But yes where I think it will introduce additional weight to my prompting, e.g. 'Ensure the output is orange' is not the same weighting as 'Please ensure the output is orange' and that is not the same weighting as 'PLEASE ensure the output is orange'.
Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?
#28I do. I'll compliment the model or give it a thumbs-up emoji. If you watch a model's thinking stream you can see that the model is always attempting to assess the user's intent, including emotionality.. '...the user is expressing uncertainty about.. ' or '..the user is expressing appreciation for..' etc. and this influences the overall response and sometimes even their decisions. It's a language model, so why not use…
I have this superstition that if I praise correct outputs, the model may use this information that previous output was correct to produce better answers in future turns
But this only makes sense in the context of a new ask, and not as a standalone message
Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?
#29you can't directly talk to an LLM
Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?
#30If we get in the habit of being disrespectful to machines, we will easily be disrespectful of people.