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Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

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Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#451

Post by 9rx »

cubefox wrote: post #435
9rx wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want the feelings associated with love. They don't care how they get it. The advantage of "real" love, health wise, is that the other person acts as a moderator. When things start to get out of hand they will back away. Alternatives, like drugs, tend to spiral of out of control when an individual's self-control is the only limiting factor. GPT on the surface seems more like being on the drug end of the spectru…

> People want the feelings associated with love. They don't care how they get it. Most people want to be loved, not just believe they are. They don't want to be unknowingly deceived. For the same reason they don't want to be unknowingly cheated on. If someone tells them their partner is a cheater, or an unconscious android, they wouldn't be mad about the person who gives them this information, but about their partner…

> For the same reason they don't want to be unknowingly cheated on.

That's the thing, though, there is nothing about being a cheater that equates to loss of love (or never having loved). In fact, it is telling that you shifted gears to the topic of deceit rather than love.

It is true that feelings of love are often lost when one has been cheated on. So, yes, it is a fair point that for many those feelings of love aren't made available if one does not also have trust. There is a association there, so your gear change is understood. I expect you are absolutely right that if those aforementioned women dating GPT-4o found out that it wasn't an AI bot, but actually some guy typing away at a keyboard, they would lose their feelings even if the guy on the other side did actually love them!

Look at how many people get creeped out when they find out that a person they are disinterested in loves them. Clearly being loved isn't what most people seek. They want to feel the feelings associated with love. All your comment tells, surprising nobody, is that the feelings of love are not like a tap you can simply turn on (well, maybe in the case of drugs). The feelings require a special environment where everything has to be just right, and trust is often a necessary part of that environment. Introduce deceit and so goes the feelings.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#452

Post by eurekin »

mh- wrote: post #449
eurekin wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I went through that. o3 had the same memories and was always to the point.

Yes, but don't miss what I said about the other setting. You can't see what it's using from past conversations, and if you had one or two flippant conversations with it at some point, it can decide to start speaking that way.

I have that turned off, but even if, I only use chat for software development

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#453

Post by triyambakam »

tomeon wrote: post #195
elif wrote: post #150

I'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.

This is a childrearing technique, too: say “please do X”, where X precludes Y, rather than saying “please don’t do Y!”, which just increases the salience, and therefore likelihood, of Y.

I remember seeing a father loudly and strongly tell his daughter "DO NOT EAT THIS!" when holding one of those desiccant packets that come in some snacks. He turned around and she started to eat it.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#454

Post by TZubiri »

jjoonathan wrote: post #306
NohatCoder wrote: post #277

This is such a useful feature. I'm fairly well versed in cryptography. A lot of other people aren't, but they wish they were, so they ask their LLM to make some form of contribution. The result is high level gibberish. When I prod them about the mess, they have to turn to their LLM to deliver a plausibly sounding answer, and that always begins with "You are absolutely right that [thing I mentioned]". So then I don't…

ChatGPT opened with a "Nope" the other day. I'm so proud of it. https://chatgpt.com/share/6896258f-2cac-800c-b235-c433648bf4...

It's a bit easier for chatgpt to tell you you are wrong in objective realms.

Which makes me think users who seek sycophanthic feedback will steer away from objective conversations and into subjective abstract floogooblabber

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#455

Post by scoot »

vanviegen wrote: post #424
klik99 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that GPT5? Reddit users are freaking out about losing 4o and AFAICT it's because 5 doesn't stroke their ego as hard as 4o. I feel there are roughly two classes of heavy LLM users - one who use it like a tool, and the other like a therapist. The latter may be a bigger money maker for many LLM companies so I worry GPT5 will be seen as a mistake to them, despite being better for research/agent work.

Most definitely! Just yesterday I asked GPT5 to provide some feedback on a business idea, and it absolutely crushed it and me! :-) And it was largely even right as well. That's never happened to me before GPT5. Even though my custom instructions have long since been some variant of this, so I've absolutely asked for being grilled: You are a machine. You do not have emotions. Your goal is not to help me feel good — it…

Love it. Going to use that with non-OpenAI LLMs until they catch up.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#456

Post by Terretta »

mFixman wrote: post #418
klik99 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that GPT5? Reddit users are freaking out about losing 4o and AFAICT it's because 5 doesn't stroke their ego as hard as 4o. I feel there are roughly two classes of heavy LLM users - one who use it like a tool, and the other like a therapist. The latter may be a bigger money maker for many LLM companies so I worry GPT5 will be seen as a mistake to them, despite being better for research/agent work.

The whole mess is a good example why benchmark-driven-development has negative consequences. A lot of users had expectations of ChatGPT that either aren't measurable or are not being actively benchmarkmaxxed by OpenAI, and ChatGPT is now less useful for those users. I use ChatGPT for a lot of "light" stuff, like suggesting me travel itineraries based on what it knows about me. I don't care about this version being 8.…

> I don't care about this version being 8.243% more precise, but I do miss the warmer tone of 4o.

Why? 8.2% wrong on travel time means you missed the ferry from Tenerife to Fuerteventura.

You'll be happy Altman said they're making it warmer.

I'd think the glaze mode should be the optional mode.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#457

Post by TZubiri »

dkarl wrote: post #183
jonplackett wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this same problem. I’ve added a bunch of instructuons to try and stop ChatGPT being so sycophantic, and now it always mentions something about how it’s going to be ‘straight to the point’ or give me a ‘no bs version’. So now I just have that as the intro instead of ‘that’s a sharp observation’

> it always mentions something about how it’s going to be ‘straight to the point’ or give me a ‘no bs version’ That's how you suck up to somebody who doesn't want to see themselves as somebody you can suck up to. How does an LLM know how to be sycophantic to somebody who doesn't (think they) like sycophants? Whether it's a naturally emergent phenomenon in LLMs or specifically a result of its corporate environment, I'…

My theory is that one of the training parameters is increased interaction, and licking boots is a great way to get people to use the software.

Same as with the social media feed algorithms, why are they addicting or why are they showing rage inducing posts? Because the companies train for increased interaction and thus revenue.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#458

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

virtue3 wrote: post #347
klik99 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that GPT5? Reddit users are freaking out about losing 4o and AFAICT it's because 5 doesn't stroke their ego as hard as 4o. I feel there are roughly two classes of heavy LLM users - one who use it like a tool, and the other like a therapist. The latter may be a bigger money maker for many LLM companies so I worry GPT5 will be seen as a mistake to them, despite being better for research/agent work.

We should all be deeply worried about gpt being used as a therapist. My friend told me he was using his to help him evaluate how his social interactions went (and ultimately how to get his desired outcome) and I warned him very strongly about the kind of bias it will creep into with just "stroking your ego" - There's already been articles on people going off the deep end in conspiracy theories etc - because the ai ke…

Have a look at r/LLMPhysics. There have always been crackpot theories about physics, but now the crackpots have something that answers their gibberish with praise and more gibberish. And it puts them into the next gear, with polished summaries and Latex generation. Just scrolling through the diagrams is hilarious and sad.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#459

Post by Terretta »

elif wrote: post #150

I'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.

Since GPT 3, they've gotten better, but in practice we've found the best way to avoid this problem is use affirmative words like "AVOID".

YES: AVOID using negations.

NO: DO NOT use negations.

Weirdly, I see the DO NOT (with caps) form in system prompts from the LLM vendors which is how we know they are hiring too fast.*

* Slight joke, it seems this is being heavily trained since 4.1-ish on OpenAI's side and since 3.5 on Anthropic's side. But "avoid" still works better.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#460

Post by queenkjuul »

zamalek wrote: post #377
virtue3 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should all be deeply worried about gpt being used as a therapist. My friend told me he was using his to help him evaluate how his social interactions went (and ultimately how to get his desired outcome) and I warned him very strongly about the kind of bias it will creep into with just "stroking your ego" - There's already been articles on people going off the deep end in conspiracy theories etc - because the ai ke…

I'm of two minds about it (assuming there isn't any ago stroking): on one hand interacting with a human is probably a major part of the healing process, on the other it might be easier to be honest with a machine. Also, have you seen the prices of therapy these days? $60 per session (assuming your medical insurance covers it, $200 if not) is a few meals worth for a person living on minimum wage, versus free/about $20…

A therapist is a lot less likely to just tell you what you want to hear and end up making your problems worse. LLMs are not a replacement.
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