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The user is visibly frustrated

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Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#201

Post by em-bee »

Andrex wrote: post #178
em-bee wrote: post #2

behaving like a human is not the problem. behaving unpredictably is. not doing what i expect, or rather not being able to define what i can expect is what's bothering me. but the real kicker is: getting frustrated creates stress, that's unhealthy and makes for a hostile work environment. as much as i sympathize with the idea that AI tools can be more helpful than they cause pain, i am simply not interested in working…

> behaving like a human is not the problem. behaving unpredictably is. Not sure you can have one without the other.

humans are way more predictable than AI. not predictable in the mathematical sense, but in the trust sense, that when i ask a human to do something, they will do it in the way i taught them. and if they don't, i can correct them and they will learn and adapt. it's not perfect, but there is progress. even if they do something different from what i want, they will keep doing it that way until they learn a different way. AI is entirely random in the ways it goes wrong.

so when i say a human is predictable, i mean that a human will do their best to follow instructions, and they will generally not repeat mistakes.

a human that refuses to listen, and doesn't learn will be fired for being unsuitable for the work i expect them to do. in that sense i tried working with AI and i decided to fire them because they don't meet my expectations.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#202

Post by em-bee »

mrweasel wrote: post #54
em-bee wrote: post #2

behaving like a human is not the problem. behaving unpredictably is. not doing what i expect, or rather not being able to define what i can expect is what's bothering me. but the real kicker is: getting frustrated creates stress, that's unhealthy and makes for a hostile work environment. as much as i sympathize with the idea that AI tools can be more helpful than they cause pain, i am simply not interested in working…

> that's also why i am not working with windows Oh good, so it's not just me. Windows is weird, my hand starts cramping up and I start getting angry pretty quickly when I use it. For LLMs, I just can't use them, they aren't there yet for me. What I need is for an LLMs to say "stop, you're clearly doing something wrong, talk me through what it is you want to do". The current generation of LLMs seems designed to piss m…

my hand starts cramping up and I start getting angry pretty quickly when I use it

it's been a while (fortunately) but yes, same. for me it's this feeling of helplessness. like this behavior is not a bug but an intentional design flaw that won't ever get fixed.

like this quote: when something goes wrong in windows i bang my head against the wall and give up. when something goes wrong in linux i bang my head against the wall and go look at the code. (paraphrased from memory, i could not find the source)

(edit: actually the original quote is a bit different than from how i remembered it: https://www.junauza.com/2008/01/top-50-linux-quotes-of-all-t... (search for nr 10))

The current generation of LLMs

i feel exactly as you say. and maybe in the future LLMs will improve. it is also clear that some people have different levels of tolerance for this. if someone can tolerate the current state and work with it, good for them. i simply don't have much of any tolerance for that at all.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#203

Post by em-bee »

streetfighter64 wrote: post #64
em-bee wrote: post #2

behaving like a human is not the problem. behaving unpredictably is. not doing what i expect, or rather not being able to define what i can expect is what's bothering me. but the real kicker is: getting frustrated creates stress, that's unhealthy and makes for a hostile work environment. as much as i sympathize with the idea that AI tools can be more helpful than they cause pain, i am simply not interested in working…

Incredibly privileged take to claim that using Windows is somehow beneath your "dignity". Do you have any idea at all of the kinds of jobs people are doing in the real world? Imagine the daycare worker taking care of your kids or the truck driver bringing your food saying "getting frustrated creates stress, that's unhealthy and makes for a hostile work environment".

i live in a developing country. from my perspective, anyone who has access to a computer is privileged.

Imagine the daycare worker taking care of your kids or the truck driver bringing your food saying "getting frustrated creates stress, that's unhealthy and makes for a hostile work environment".

what's your point? if you get frustrated with my kids then you are in the wrong profession or you need more training. as a parent i am not allowed to get frustrated with my kids either. if you get frustrated with my delivery, then i am sorry, and if i was the cause, i apologize. tell me what went wrong and i'll do better next time. if it was something else, you have my sympathies. i'll do my best to not make it any worse.

working in a stress free environment is not a privilege, it's a human right. nobody deserves to be mistreated at work, or be stressed by other peoples expectations (which is a form of mistreatment, or, dare i say, abuse).

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#204

Post by mghackerlady »

alentred wrote: post #48
RandomBK wrote: post #36

I've found swearing at a model to be quite effective in getting it to rethink and correct its mistakes. This seems to apply across Codex, Claude, Qwen, and Gemma/Gemini. I don't know if the model is picking up on a "need to lock in and be more rigorous" signal, or if the model providers are routing to smarter models if they detect a frustrated user. But if a model keeps making the same mistakes, swearing at it often…

Reminds me of this study: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.04950 . It demonstrates that being "rude" or "very rude" increases the accuracy of the results. A dubious but very fun read. The prompts in Table 1 (top of page 3) are awesome. I am sure they tried other prompts, but didn't include them to the paper.

"You poor creature" XD

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#205

Post by em-bee »

antonvs wrote: post #114
streetfighter64 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredibly privileged take to claim that using Windows is somehow beneath your "dignity". Do you have any idea at all of the kinds of jobs people are doing in the real world? Imagine the daycare worker taking care of your kids or the truck driver bringing your food saying "getting frustrated creates stress, that's unhealthy and makes for a hostile work environment".

I didn't see them say anything about dignity. They said using Windows makes them angry, which is understandable. That speaks to a poor user experience design. Framing it as a privilege issue is blaming the victim.

I didn't see them say anything about dignity

actually, i did, and i stand by it. working with a system that makes you angry is undignified.

it's a reference to a quote that i can't find the source for which roughly goes like this: *why i use linux and not windows? i could also rob banks and ..., but you have to keep a certain amount of dignity". the original of that quote was in german.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#206

Post by MomsAVoxell »

anal_reactor wrote: post #189
aa-jv wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're describing the race to the bottom which comes from an industry-wide habit of establishing low standards and sticking them to the user, and really all you are doing is justifying why its okay that software sucks - not explaining how to improve it. We can justify sucky software until the cows come home, and many choose to do so in lieu of actually becoming better engineers. >stupid to spend resources improving U…

> I know plenty of counter examples to your Ryanair straw man Then name them lol I think you simply don't understand how many poor people there are and how much money can be earned by simply offering the cheapest product. People are not going to buy your premium software if they don't have money for luxury products, simple as that.

You act as if Ryanair is the only flight service in town.

The counter example is Lufthansa. Plenty of people prefer it because the service is better and it represents better value for money.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#208

Post by whstl »

tacone wrote: post #170
whstl wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If compaction is throwing away crucial prompting instructions even when it's at a 1% of maximum token usage (like my example), then it's a software bug, not an LLM artifact.

Doesn't compaction invalidate token caching, btw?

I don't see how this has anything to do with my message, sorry.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#209

Post by Night_Thastus »

As long as we're dealing with language models - those models will output human-readable text. An exchange of human-readable text is going to appear to be a dialog, even if it isn't really one.

You could tweak it, but humans are incredibly good at anthropomorphizing anything - even without an apparently dialog. I think it's a lost cause until we move away from LLMs completely to a more generic intelligence.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#210

Post by anal_reactor »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #206
anal_reactor wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know plenty of counter examples to your Ryanair straw man Then name them lol I think you simply don't understand how many poor people there are and how much money can be earned by simply offering the cheapest product. People are not going to buy your premium software if they don't have money for luxury products, simple as that.

You act as if Ryanair is the only flight service in town. The counter example is Lufthansa. Plenty of people prefer it because the service is better and it represents better value for money.

Wouldn't you look at, Lufthansa also heavily invests in low-cost brands like Eurowings.
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