alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?
This is an orthogonal question to whether LLMs have qualia (almost certainly no) and to the question of whether any hypothetical qualia would be in any way correlated with word choice (also almost certainly no), as opposed to mechanistic factors such as runtime and memory access patterns.
Comments
If we get in the habit of being disrespectful to machines, we will easily be disrespectful of people.
Does anyone really expect these neural reference books to be able to appreciate politeness and gratitude... They can probably imitate it, but it's unlikely to affect their usefulness or uselessness. Politeness and gratitude towards an LLM rather characterize the person themselves
I do. I'll compliment the model or give it a thumbs-up emoji. If you watch a model's thinking stream you can see that the model is always attempting to assess the user's intent, including emotionality.. '...the user is expressing uncertainty about.. ' or '..the user is expressing appreciation for..' etc. and this influences the overall response and sometimes even their decisions. It's a language model, so why not use language to convey info about what you're feeling to the model, it understands that language too.
Neither cursing nor thanking LLMs is useful. Relating in emotive syntax puts you in the wrong headspace to get the most out of the chat.
We anthropomorphise things very easily -- dogs, toys, cars -- because we're wired as social beings to have theory of mind. It's no surprise that AI chat, which mimics us, is popular.
I do. I justify the action via mechanical / prompting logic (my instructions are to treat me as an informed peer and my understanding is that keeping the whole conversation in "two peers talking" register makes it easier for the LLM to maintain that mode).
But, more honestly, it's just a social habit and saving keystrokes isn't worth training myself out of it.
No, not in the way you describe (I think). I think you mean within a context adding additional 'please' or 'thank you', so no.
But yes where I think it will introduce additional weight to my prompting, e.g. 'Ensure the output is orange' is not the same weighting as 'Please ensure the output is orange' and that is not the same weighting as 'PLEASE ensure the output is orange'.
I certainly say please and thank you. Whether or not it makes a difference to the LLM, it makes a difference to me. I want to retain some humanity and politeness in my own behavior, even if I spend an inordinate amount of time communicating with, instructing, and debating a non-sentient piece of code.
No, it doesn’t have feelings - it would be like asking your washing machine to please wash your pants? Anthropomorphising LLMs seems deeply unhealthy.
I often start prompts with “please”, but I usually don’t thank the model. Framing a question or a request for help with “please” is in distribution for me, it’s a distraction from composing a thoughtful prompt about my actual question to go back and edit out politeness.
I don’t reply “thanks” like I would to a person though, I just close the chat if I have no more follow-ups
When something surprises and delights me, I tell it. Why not, it lifts my own mood to say something nice.
All the time. Sometimes it does an absolutely bang-up job.
No. I do not say think you to my bash script either.
The anthropomorphisation those companies push is one of the most annoying and unhealthy aspect of llms.
Since every token costs money and I dont think they are conscious, never.
you can't directly talk to an LLM
No, but cursing helps. I often call it a woke moron. The Chinese models then try to be extra precise and factual.
yes, it goes naturally most of the time, i also say good job and don't hold my thoughts if the job is bad
Yup. When it does me dirty, I let it know my entire emotional spectrum.
ofc, i joke that if an AI becomes evil, it will query the database for our chat history
I do, just in case the robots take over :p
I do a pls sometimes.
when I use chinese which is my first language, no, never. when I use english, yes, not every time, but about 50% chance.
When the LLM starts doing dumb shit I start cursing it like a sailor who had been a pig farmer.
It makes me feel better, but doesn't help.
I just see:
Thinking: The user is unhappy. I need to .... <whatever> (and then probably the same dumb shit again).
LLMs are useful but sometimes fucking frustrating dumb shits of loose transitors.
Yes
I used to, but it just means an extra round of conversation, so I stopped.
sometimes
Yes.
If we reduce back to the “LLMs are next word prediction algorithms” and they have a huge training corpus including positive and negative human interactions, it’s not crazy to think they’ll be influenced by the flow of those learned interactions and respond subtly better to positive interactions than negative.