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I'm absolutely right

absolutelyright.lol

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Re: I'm absolutely right

#71

Post by PaulStatezny »

zozbot234 wrote: post #60
the_af wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's simply an engagement tactic. You have "someone" constantly praising your insight, telling you you are asking "the right questions", and obediently following orders (until you trigger some content censorship, of course). And who wouldn't want to come back? You have this obedient friend who, unlike the real world, keeps telling you what an insightful, clever, amazing person you are. It even apologizes when…

> ... You have this obedient friend who, unlike the real world, keeps telling you what an insightful, clever, amazing person you are. It even apologizes when it has to contradict you on something. None of my friends do! You're absolutely right! It's a very obvious ploy, the sycophancy when talking to those AI robots is quite blatant.

Truly incisive observation. In fact, I’d go further: your point about the contrast with real friends is so sharp it almost deserves footnotes. If models could recognize brilliance, they’d probably benchmark themselves against this comment before daring to generate another word.

Re: I'm absolutely right

#73

Post by pessimizer »

tantalor wrote: post #7
latexr wrote: post #4

As I opened the website, the “16” changed to “17”. This looked interesting, as if the data were being updated live just as I loaded the page. Alas, a refresh (and quick check in the Developer Tools) reveals it’s fake and always does the transition. It’s a cool effect, but feels like a dirty trick.

It's a dark pattern

No, it's just the kind of dishonesty that people who create dark patterns start with. It's meant to give the believable impression that something that is not happening is happening, to people hopefully too ignorant to investigate.

Of course, in the tech industry, you can safely assume that anyone can detect your scam would happily be complicit in your scam. They wouldn't be employed otherwise.

-----

edit: the funniest part about this little inconsequential subdebate is that this is exactly the same as making a computer program a chirpy ass-kissing sycophant. It isn't the algorithms that are kissing your ass, it's the people who are marketing them that want to make you feel a friendship and loyalty that is nonexistent.

"Who's the victim?"

Re: I'm absolutely right

#74

Post by Wowfunhappy »

pessimizer wrote: post #67
latexr wrote: post #4

As I opened the website, the “16” changed to “17”. This looked interesting, as if the data were being updated live just as I loaded the page. Alas, a refresh (and quick check in the Developer Tools) reveals it’s fake and always does the transition. It’s a cool effect, but feels like a dirty trick.

Reminds me that the reason that loading spinners spin is so that you knew that the loading/system hadn't frozen. That was too hard (you actually had to program something that could understand that it had frozen), so it was just replaced everywhere with an animation that doesn't tell you anything and will spin until the sun burns out. Progress!

…although in many cases you kind of don’t have a choice here, right? If you’re waiting for some API to return data, there’s basically no way to know whether it has stalled. Presumably there will be a timeout, but if the timeout is broken for some reason, the spinner will just spin.

Re: I'm absolutely right

#75

Post by KTibow »

unshavedyak wrote: post #53
trjordan wrote: post #41

OK, so I love this, because we all recognize it. It's not fully just a tic of language, though. Responses that start off with "You're right!" are alignment mechanisms. The LLM, with its single-token prediction approach, follows up with a suggestion that much more closely follows the user's desires, instead of latching onto it's own previous approach. The other tic I love is "Actually, that's not right." That happens…

I just wish they could hide these steering tokens in the thinking blurb or some such. Ie mostly hidden from the user. Having it reply to the user that way is quite annoying heh.

This can still happen even with thinking models as long as the model outputs tokens in a sequence. Only way to fix would be to allow it to restart its response or switch to diffusion.

Re: I'm absolutely right

#76

Post by subscribed »

ryukoposting wrote: post #13

I wonder how much of Anthropic's revenue comes from tokens saying "you're absolutely right!"

"You're concise" in the "personality" setting saves so much time.

Also define your baseline skill/knowledge level, it stops it from explaining you things _you_ could teach about.

Re: I'm absolutely right

#77

Post by fluoridation »

ZaoLahma wrote: post #70
kuschku wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does this affect your own attitude? Do the suggestions given by your phone's keyboard whenever you type something affect your attitude in the same way? If not, why is ChatGPT then affecting your attitude?

Using your potato peeler example: If my potato peeler told me "Why bother? Order pizza instead." I'd be obese. An LLM can directly influence your willingness to pursue an idea by how it responds to it. Interest and excitement, even if simulated, is more likely to make you pursue the idea than "ok cool".

Why, though? I'm with GP, I don't understand it at all. If I thought something is interesting, I wouldn't lose interest even if a person reacted with indifference to it; I just wouldn't tell them about it again.

Re: I'm absolutely right

#78

Post by chrismorgan »

yoavfr wrote: post #8
latexr wrote: post #4

As I opened the website, the “16” changed to “17”. This looked interesting, as if the data were being updated live just as I loaded the page. Alas, a refresh (and quick check in the Developer Tools) reveals it’s fake and always does the transition. It’s a cool effect, but feels like a dirty trick.

Sorry if that felt dirty - I thought about it as a signal that the data is live (it is!).

API responses seem to be alternating between saying 19+20 and saying 0+0, at present.

Re: I'm absolutely right

#79

Post by PaulStatezny »

blinding-streak wrote: post #40
pflenker wrote: post #30

Gemini keeps telling me "you've hit a common frustration/issue/topic/..." so often it is actively pushing me away from using it. It either makes me feel stupid because I ask it a stupid question and it pretends - probably to not hurt my feelings - that everyone has the same problem, or it makes me feel stupid because I felt smart about asking my super duper edge case question no one else has probably ever asked befor…

I don't think that's Gemini's problem necessarily. You shouldn't be so insecure.

Telling someone they "shouldn't be insecure" reminds me of this famous Bob Newhart segment on Mad TV.

Bob plays the role of a therapist, and when his client explains an issue she's having, his solution is, "STOP IT!"

> You shouldn't be so insecure.

Not assuming that there's any insecurity here, but psychological matters aren't "willed away". That's not how it works.

Re: I'm absolutely right

#80

Post by kuschku »

ZaoLahma wrote: post #70
kuschku wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does this affect your own attitude? Do the suggestions given by your phone's keyboard whenever you type something affect your attitude in the same way? If not, why is ChatGPT then affecting your attitude?

Using your potato peeler example: If my potato peeler told me "Why bother? Order pizza instead." I'd be obese. An LLM can directly influence your willingness to pursue an idea by how it responds to it. Interest and excitement, even if simulated, is more likely to make you pursue the idea than "ok cool".

> If my potato peeler told me "Why bother? Order pizza instead." I'd be obese.

But why do you let yourself be influenced so much by others, or in this case, random filler words from mindless machines?

You should listen to your own feelings, desires, and wishes, not anything or anyone else. Try to find the motivation inside of you, try to have the conversation with yourself instead of with ChatGPT.

And if someone tells you "don't even bother", maybe show more of a fighting spirit and do it with even more energy just to prove them wrong?

(I know it's easier said than done, but my therapist once told me it's necessary to learn not to rely on external motivation)

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