alt Hacker NewsI really wish they'd stop trying to suck up to me--all the "that's a really insightful question!" stuff.
I'm one of those aspy people who immediately don't trust other humans who try to fluff up my ego. Don't like it from a chatbot either.
But the fact that all the chatbots do it means that most people really crave that ego reinforcement.
Replies
awakeasleep • yesterday at 6:44 PM
You can already fix this in ChatGPT.
Settings > Personalization:
1. Base Style & Tone: Efficient
2. Warmth: Less
3. Enthusiastic: Less
I am amazed that people can use it at all without these changes.
I do have to wonder what the mix is between "our data show this is how most people want to be talked to" and "these tokens lead to better responses on objective measures of correctness." That is, in the training data insightful questions are tangled with insightful answers, so if the bot basically always treats the user like a genius it gets on the track that leads to better answers.
Or yeah, it's just people being weak to flattery.