Live data from Hacker News

AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

news.stanford.edu

671–680 of 684 posts

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#671
post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly a bunch of other people also disagree profoundly with everything I said, since my comment is currently sitting at 0 having at one point been higher. I vigorously encourage anyone who thinks something I wrote is bad to downvote it as they see fit, but it would be nice if some of those people would tell me what about my comment they found so objectionable. (It all seems pretty well reasoned to me -- but it woul…

I never downvote. It isnt worth dwelling on it. People who downvote are usually the types who will not have a constructive discussion with anyways. To be specific, one is text wall the other is that i disagree with the majority of what u said but sadly dont have the time to outline all of it. At the end of the day my disagreement is only an opinion so worth little.

For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't meaning to imply that you downvoted me. (Nor do I mind if you did.) I don't think it's true that people who downvote things are never able to have a constructive discussion, but there's probably some correlation there.

Anyway, thanks for giving some indication of what you didn't like.

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nuts. Not so much in this thread right now, but in one earlier there was a wall of them that all latched onto the same buzzphrase from the article.

i’m feeling a brilliant sense of satisfaction now that we can flag them due to guideline changes

[dead]

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#675

I think the problem stems from the fact that we have a number of implicit parameters in our heads that allow us to evaluate pros and cons but, unless we communicate those parameters explicitly, the AI cannot take them into account. We ask it to be "objective" but, more and more, I'm of the opinion that there isn't such a thing as objectivity, what we call objectivity is just shared subjectivity; since the AI doesn't…

> I'm of the opinion that there isn't such a thing as objectivity So you have rejected objective reality over accepting the evidence that "AI" contains no thinking or intelligence? That sounds unwise to me.

I don't know how you connected one thing over the other... that's a leap pretty in line with your username :)

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#677

This is especially problematic because of how easily (and unconsciously) one can bias LLMs with how the prompt is framed. As an experiment, I recently asked an LLM to analyse the export of a text chat to uncover relationship dynamics. Simply stating that I was one of the people in the chat would make the LLM turn the other person into the villain. None of that was visible if I framed the chat as only involving third…

If these LLMs were trained on internet forum posts, think about how those work. If the posts talked about third party interactions (movie characters), they try to see everything from all the points of view. If nothing else, because it can be interesting to talk about. If instead the posts talk about personal interactions, then people go into advice mode. Your girlfriend's bad for you and cheating on you, dump her bef…

Yeah, that makes a lot sense.

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I'll bite the artillery shell: I don't mean to dismiss you or what you are saying; in fact I strongly relate - wouldn't it be nice to be able to hash things out with people and mutually benefit from both the shared and the diverging perspectives implied in such interaction? Isn't that the most natural thing in the world? Unfortunately these days this sounds halfway between a very privileged perspective and a pie…

> When was the last time a person took responsibility for the bad outcome you got as a direct consequence of following their advice? ... I mean, the LLM certainly isn't going to do that.

Yes, exactly - while humans are "only" highly unlikely to do so.

Wasn't that the premise?

There's X% probability to get unaccountable bad advice from a human; Y% probability of same from LLM.

But the stakes are different not because X!=Y. In fact, those probabilities might as well be equal. It's not like one can do much more than vaguely intuit them.

The stakes are different because the LLM is not considered a person, and therefore, one risks less by asking it a question.

(Ostensibly, anyway.)

>Other humans are available.

Sure. Available to miss my point entirely. And then to be upset by my attempts to point it out more precisely. And then downhill from there.

Re: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice

#679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any more context you're willing to share?

We really do love dirty laundry don't we? I'm sure whatever the context is, it is deeply personal. Do you also have your popcorn ready?

If it’s too personal to share, maybe don’t mention it in the first place? People doing this online and IRL are attention seeking
Post reply on HN