alt Hacker NewsI like the suggestion to emphasize the robotic/nonhuman nature of AI. Instead of making it sound friendlier and more human, it should by default behave very mechanistic and detached, to remind us it's not in fact a human or a companion, but a tool. A hammer doesn't cry "yelp" every time you use it to hit a nail, nor does it congratulate you on how good your hammering is going and that maybe you should do it some more 'cause you're acing it!
Something that bothers me about the intentional anthropormorphization of the LLM interface is that it asks me to conflate a tool with a sentient being.
The firm expectations and lack of patience I have for any failings in most of my tools would be totally inappropriate to apply to another human being, and yet here I am asked to interact with this tool as though it were a person. The only options are either to treat the tool in a way that feels "wrong," or to be "kind" to the tool, and I think you see people going both ways.
I worry that, if I get used to being impatient and short with the AI, some of that will bleed into my textual interactions with other people.