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AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

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Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“AI is nicer than the average redditor” would be a more accurate title

I would say people on /r/amitheasshole are more biased towards the poster, i.e. nicer. There's plenty of those I've read where I thought it sounded like the poster was the asshole and the top replies were NTA.

Yeah every single time I click on one of those posts the top comments are NTA. A couple times I tried randomly opening a few dozen posts and checking the top comments to see if I could find a single YTA and struck out.

Granted many of the OPs are very biased in the poster's favor. Most I've read fall into one of two buckets: either they want to gripe about some obviously bad behavior, or it's a controved and likely fake story.

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#282

Has anyone found a good prompt to fix this? It seems like a subtle problem because it’s 90% too agreeable but will sometimes get really stubborn.

There is no sufficient prompt because this is trained into them during mid-late phases. It's ingrained into the weights

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#284
post #124

Even as someone who (wrongly) believed that I had high emotional intelligence, I too was bit by this. Almost a year ago when LLMs were starting to become more ubiquitous and powerful I discussed a big life/professional decision with an LLM over the course of many months. I took its recommendation. Ultimately it turned out to be the wrong decision. Thankfully it was recoverable, but it really sobered me up on LLMs. Th…

Weird, i am using copilot and it steers me mostly towards self reflection and tries to look at things objectively. It is very friendly and comes across as empathetic, to not hurt your feelings, that is probably baked in to keep the conversation going...

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that if you go to an AI for advice and emotional support, it will do what most people will do - tell you what it thinks you want to hear. I am not surprised about this at all, and I do notice that when you veer into these areas, it can do it in a surprisingly subtle and dangerous way. I try to focus on results. Things like an app that does what you want, data and reports that you need, or technical things lik…

Nice joke, hadn't seen it coming

Sounds like AI-written, eh? :-D

(esp last sentence?)

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#286
post #259

This needs to be taken in context. In my view, AI definitely gives better advice than friends, acquaintances, or colleagues (at least in the US culture). But the advice from parents is still the most valuable. Here is how I would rank it: 1. Parents 2. AI 3. Friends and family 4. Internet search 5. Reddit

Why do you trust ai so much? I don’t trust it to tell me the sky is blue.

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#287

With AI, I often like to act like a 3rd party who doesn't have skin in the game and ask the AI to give the strongest criticisms of both sides. Acting like I hold the opposite position as I truly hold can help sometimes as well. Pretending to change my mind is another trick. The idea is to keep the AI from guessing where I stand.

Sounds like rubber-ducking with extra steps, tbh.

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#288
post #274
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

r/AmItheAsshole is biased towards breaking off relationships rather than fixing them. They also hate social obligations. e.g. If the OP is asking "I ghosted my friend in AA who insulted me during a relapse", Reddit would say NTA in a heartbeat, while the real world would tell OP to be more forgiving. On the contrary, if the post was "the other kids at school refuse to play with my child", Reddit would say YTA because…

Absolutely. I wonder how many parents have been no contacted, SOs broken off with, friendships broken because of the Reddit hivemind's attitude. Pretty sure it's doing a huge amount of societal damage.

I wouldn't blame reddit, it's what you get when you ask several thousand teenagers to give collective relationship advice.

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#289
Overly, compared to what? Most people I know would be hard pressed to give either accurate information or even honest opinions when specifically asked. People want to be liked and people want to like people for reasons that have little to do with accuracy or honesty.

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“AI is nicer than the average redditor” would be a more accurate title

I would say people on /r/amitheasshole are more biased towards the poster, i.e. nicer. There's plenty of those I've read where I thought it sounded like the poster was the asshole and the top replies were NTA.

It’s gendered, by the way

Many of the posts are A/B tests of a prior post where only the genders were flipped of the OP and antagonist to see how the consensus also flips

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