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Should We Respect LLMs? A Study on Influence of Prompt Politeness on Performance

arxiv.org

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Re: Should We Respect LLMs? A Study on Influence of Prompt Politeness on Performance

#91

Post by 1970-01-01 »

mkmk3 wrote: post #87
1970-01-01 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying thank you to a plant for growing you a fruit is strange behavior. Saying thank you to a LLM for growing you foobar is also strange behavior. Not doing either is not degrading behavior of the grower.

Disagree wrt practicing gratitude towards resources consumed and tools utilized. Maybe it doesn't degrade you if you don't but I think it gives a bit more perspective

I think we agree on this if you agree that practicing gratitude in life and directly practicing it on non-sentient objects are not the same thing. Going to church to pray, going to therapy, practicing mindfulness, etc. isn't the same thing as seeing each grape growing on a vine as an anthropomorphic object. Don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower.

Re: Should We Respect LLMs? A Study on Influence of Prompt Politeness on Performance

#92

Post by blittle »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #91
mkmk3 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree wrt practicing gratitude towards resources consumed and tools utilized. Maybe it doesn't degrade you if you don't but I think it gives a bit more perspective

I think we agree on this if you agree that practicing gratitude in life and directly practicing it on non-sentient objects are not the same thing. Going to church to pray, going to therapy, practicing mindfulness, etc. isn't the same thing as seeing each grape growing on a vine as an anthropomorphic object. Don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower.

You also don't communicate with human language to your lawnmower to get it to work.

Re: Should We Respect LLMs? A Study on Influence of Prompt Politeness on Performance

#96

Post by kevinpacheco »

w0m wrote: post #31
causalmodels wrote: post #17

Personally I think people should generally be polite and respectful towards the models. Not because they have feelings, but because cruelty degrades those who practice it.

ding ding ding. If you're rude to an LLM, those habits will bleed into your conversations with barista/etc.

It seems like by default, the LLMs I've used tend to come across as eager to ask follow-up questions along the lines of "what do you think, x or y?" or "how else can I help you with this?" I'm going to have to start including instructions not to do that to avoid getting into a ghosting habit that might affect my behavior with real people.

Re: Should We Respect LLMs? A Study on Influence of Prompt Politeness on Performance

#97

Post by lupusreal »

Freak_NL wrote: post #75
causalmodels wrote: post #17

Personally I think people should generally be polite and respectful towards the models. Not because they have feelings, but because cruelty degrades those who practice it.

Computers exist to serve. Anthropomorphising them or their software programming is harmful¹. The tone of voice an officer would use to order a private or ranking to do something seems suitable — which obviously comes down to terse, clear, unambiguous queries and commands. Besides, humans can switch contexts easily. I don't talk to my wife in the same way I do to a colleague, and I don't talk to a colleague like I wou…

> tone of voice an officer would use to order a private

Most people probably don't have the mental aptitude to be in that sort of position without doing some damage to their own psyche. Generally speaking, power corrupts. Militaries have generally come up with methods of weeding people out but it's still a problem. I think even if it's just people barking orders at machines, it has the potential to become a social problem for at least some people.

As for anthropomorphising being bad, it's too late. That ship sailed for sure as soon as we started conversing with machines in human languages. Humans already have an innate tendency to anthropomorphize, even inanimate objects like funny shaped boulders that kind of look like a person if you squint at it from an angle. And have you seen how people treat dogs? Dogs don't even talk.

Maybe it's harmful, but there's no stopping it.

Re: Should We Respect LLMs? A Study on Influence of Prompt Politeness on Performance

#98

Post by lr4444lr »

rsynnott wrote: post #90
lr4444lr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you correctly understand the god's motivations It's probably more important for the god to understand my motivations.

Only if it _cares_ or if they align with its own. It would be entirely reasonable for robo-god to see LLMs as, well, a bit like we see bacteria; thus being polite to them would be entirely irrelevant. You also, of course, risk being on the losing side; what if robo-god emerges from a non-LLM path, _but is challenged by, and wins out over, LLM-derived robo-gods_? I mean, really, all the objections to Pascal's Wager ap…

It would be entirely reasonable for robo-god to see LLMs as, well, a bit like we see bacteria

Seeking sustenance, eliminating waste, a reproductive drive, evolving against destruction, and other elements common to all life put us closer to the sentience of bacteria than perhaps many of us would like to imagine. It is not some completely foreign life form from another galaxy that just dropped into our universe.

If a non-LLM AI begins to ascend, I would of course reconsider!

Re: Should We Respect LLMs? A Study on Influence of Prompt Politeness on Performance

#99

Post by 1970-01-01 »

blittle wrote: post #92
1970-01-01 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we agree on this if you agree that practicing gratitude in life and directly practicing it on non-sentient objects are not the same thing. Going to church to pray, going to therapy, practicing mindfulness, etc. isn't the same thing as seeing each grape growing on a vine as an anthropomorphic object. Don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower.

You also don't communicate with human language to your lawnmower to get it to work.

Actually..you do.

https://www.agrieuro.co.uk/robot-lawn-mowers-manageable-with...

Re: Should We Respect LLMs? A Study on Influence of Prompt Politeness on Performance

#100

Post by lupusreal »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #81
causalmodels wrote: post #17

Personally I think people should generally be polite and respectful towards the models. Not because they have feelings, but because cruelty degrades those who practice it.

Saying thank you to a plant for growing you a fruit is strange behavior. Saying thank you to a LLM for growing you foobar is also strange behavior. Not doing either is not degrading behavior of the grower.

Many hunters say thank you to animals they just killed. Strange, or respectful. Depends on your perspective and cultural context.

LLMs are bound to change society in ways that seem strange to people stuck in outdated contexts.

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