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Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)
61–70 of 223 posts
Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)
#62Funny to find this just now, when just yesterday I told an LLM "and please don't lecture me again on $factAboutSomeProgrammingSubject", and then the LLM proceeded to write wrong tests and just told me "alright, tests pass, I'm sorry for correcting you before...". It took me a while to find the wrong tests. Wasted time all around.
Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)
#63Most of the comments here seem to be from people who haven’t even read the abstract, let alone the paper. The main result, mentioned in the abstract, is the opposite of what I would have guessed: > Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that ass…
> Can you kindly consider the following problem and provide your answer.
That sounds kind of low-key passive-aggressively condescending rather than polite.
Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)
#64Most of the comments here seem to be from people who haven’t even read the abstract, let alone the paper. The main result, mentioned in the abstract, is the opposite of what I would have guessed: > Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that ass…
Hmm by the abstract and the question list they didn't measure terse fluff-less prompts?
Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuine question: do you add 'please' and 'thank you' to Google searches? If not, what sets them apart?
Genuine question: do you write Google search queries in natural language?
I didn't used to but I do now that the searches go straight to an LLM. I almost always find the model output to be much more useful than the list of search results.
Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)
#66i only say please and thank you such that when the robots finally take over, they will remember i was nice to them.
I used to when using chatgpt version now that I am using api I keep it short as it costs money so no need to add thanks etc
Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)
#67i only say please and thank you such that when the robots finally take over, they will remember i was nice to them.
Oldie but a goodie. Why would it matter thou
Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)
#68Most of the comments here seem to be from people who haven’t even read the abstract, let alone the paper. The main result, mentioned in the abstract, is the opposite of what I would have guessed: > Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that ass…
> Can you kindly consider the following problem and provide your answer. That sounds kind of low-key passive-aggressively condescending rather than polite.
> I know you are not smart, but try this.
And that kind of sounds like a challenge instead of an insult, to me at least (of course IRL would depend on context).
Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)
#69I have always said please and thank you to LLMs, not to increase accuracy or because I'm stupid. I believe it is more about me than about the LLM, and this is anyway a habit I don't want to lose.
Me too! You've said exactly what I was about to say. Anyone else feel that way?
Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thomas Aquinas believed cruelty to animals was wrong not because animals have souls (and with that all the standard moral rights), but because it can teach us cruelty to other humans.
Snarky morning: "spiritual souls" as opposed to "mere animal souls". Sorry, could not control myself.
Spiritual or not, anyone watching cattle in an abatoir will recognize symptoms of the kind of foreboding that I would suffer prior to execution.