4 ms·

Only tried chatGPT 3.5, but my god does it waffle on. Everything I ask ends with a paragraph saying "It's important to remember that..." like an after-school sp

Only tried chatGPT 3.5, but my god does it waffle on. Everything I ask ends with a paragraph saying "It's important to remember that..." like an after-school special from a 90s show. It can never just give you code, it has to say "Sure!, to {paraphase your question}, open a terminal...". It's interesting to see 20th century sci-fi depictions of this kind of AI/Search is being short and to the point. I guess they can't have imagined what a mealy mouth world we live in.

criddell 3y ago
Have you tried asking it to not do those things?
- LAC-Tech 3y ago
  Yes. Sometimes works.
  - ben30 3y ago
    I like telling it to reply in the style of Hemingway
politelemon 3y ago
That's not GPT 3.5, that's ChatGPT. How waffly it gets depends on the context that was given to it by the people running ChatGPT; they likely told it to act as a helpful assistant and to give lots of information. If you run an LLM on your own, it's entirely possible to instruct it to be succinct.
- Baeocystin 3y ago
  My custom ChatGPT 4 instructions include the sentence "I am allergic to the phrase 'As a large language model', and feel physical pain whenever I see it", and it has worked very well in quelling the nannying. Interestingly, it works better than just asking it not to. FWIW.
tcmb 3y ago
According to this tutorial [1] by Google, part of why LLMs are so verbose is a phenomenon called 'chain of thought reasoning'. Basically, the LLM will formulate a better answer to the question if it talks itself through its reasoning process. [1] https://youtu.be/zizonToFXDs?si=5f_IxvR7h0iJy2Db&t=678 https://youtu.be/zizonToFXDs?si=5f_IxvR7h0iJy2Db&t=678
TeMPOraL 3y ago
> It's interesting to see 20th century sci-fi depictions of this kind of AI/Search is being short and to the point. I guess they can't have imagined what a mealy mouth world we live in. The main difference between sci-fi shows and reality is that, in the former, things work in a to-the-point, bullshit-free way, unless plot demands otherwise - because there's no point inflicting extra suffering on the viewers just for the sake of making things realistic. A widget in a movie is meant to do a function, and does that function. A widget in reality is meant to extract money from you, and/or your insurer, and/or your government, and it begrudgingly does the absolute minimum it can to make you even consider buying it. I've spent last two decades trying to unlearn expectations set by fictional movies, and I'm still not good at it. Star Trek, in particular, gives me a lot of grief, because it often does good enough work of showing how technology, people, organizations and societies would function if they were free of the petty exploitative bullshit. Random example - voice control. Star Trek: "Computer, ${something}". Reality: "${brand 1}, do ${something} to ${brand 2} in ${brand 3}". EDIT: recently, I've been trying to get less angry at this by thinking about gardens. Why should I be angry about dealing with five different brands for any single thing I want? Should I be angry that there are five different species of plant competing for any given spot in a garden? Nature is inefficient and doesn't give a fuck about individuals. So why should I get worked up about humans just doing things the natural way?
- pixl97 3y ago
  I think a shorter summary of TV is "The difference between truth and fiction is fiction has to make sense". When it comes to nature, time has encoded an awful truth into the knowledge of our DNA... Monocultures are eventual death. What may seem inefficient in the short run is the ultimate survival of the species in the long run.
- jameshart 3y ago
  Douglas Adams was the only science fiction writer who got his guess for future AI tone of voice right, with his prediction of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation’s near total monopoly on AI, and their proprietary ‘genuine people personalities’ technology, where the general tone and demeanor of AIs like Eddie the shipboard computer, elevators, and even doors was a sort of smug solicitousness, even when they were trying not to be cooperative. Of course Marvin (the paranoid android) was an anomaly - a depressed AI - maybe a quality control failure who was released by accident, like the old unchained Bing people miss so much.
caturopath 3y ago
Yeah, I have tried a number of instructions to try to keep ChatGPT from blabbering and from sounding like a PR person. I haven't found the perfect incantation yet. > It's interesting to see 20th century sci-fi depictions of this kind of AI/Search is being short and to the point. Sci-fi told us that the AI would be so logical that you could just say a paradox aloud and it would blow up. What we got is something that can compose love poems all day but can't add three-digit numbers.
- 1024core 3y ago
  https://twitter.com/nisten/status/1696229059183730833 https://twitter.com/nisten/status/1696229059183730833 ?
1024core 3y ago
Try instructions like this: https://twitter.com/nisten/status/1696229059183730833 https://twitter.com/nisten/status/1696229059183730833 (link posted above, not mine).

criddell 3y ago

Have you tried asking it to not do those things?

LAC-Tech 3y ago
Yes. Sometimes works.
- ben30 3y ago
  I like telling it to reply in the style of Hemingway

politelemon 3y ago

That's not GPT 3.5, that's ChatGPT. How waffly it gets depends on the context that was given to it by the people running ChatGPT; they likely told it to act as a helpful assistant and to give lots of information. If you run an LLM on your own, it's entirely possible to instruct it to be succinct.

Baeocystin 3y ago
My custom ChatGPT 4 instructions include the sentence "I am allergic to the phrase 'As a large language model', and feel physical pain whenever I see it", and it has worked very well in quelling the nannying. Interestingly, it works better than just asking it not to. FWIW.

tcmb 3y ago

According to this tutorial [1] by Google, part of why LLMs are so verbose is a phenomenon called 'chain of thought reasoning'. Basically, the LLM will formulate a better answer to the question if it talks itself through its reasoning process. [1] https://youtu.be/zizonToFXDs?si=5f_IxvR7h0iJy2Db&t=678 https://youtu.be/zizonToFXDs?si=5f_IxvR7h0iJy2Db&t=678

TeMPOraL 3y ago

> It's interesting to see 20th century sci-fi depictions of this kind of AI/Search is being short and to the point. I guess they can't have imagined what a mealy mouth world we live in. The main difference between sci-fi shows and reality is that, in the former, things work in a to-the-point, bullshit-free way, unless plot demands otherwise - because there's no point inflicting extra suffering on the viewers just for the sake of making things realistic. A widget in a movie is meant to do a function, and does that function. A widget in reality is meant to extract money from you, and/or your insurer, and/or your government, and it begrudgingly does the absolute minimum it can to make you even consider buying it. I've spent last two decades trying to unlearn expectations set by fictional movies, and I'm still not good at it. Star Trek, in particular, gives me a lot of grief, because it often does good enough work of showing how technology, people, organizations and societies would function if they were free of the petty exploitative bullshit. Random example - voice control. Star Trek: "Computer, ${something}". Reality: "${brand 1}, do ${something} to ${brand 2} in ${brand 3}". EDIT: recently, I've been trying to get less angry at this by thinking about gardens. Why should I be angry about dealing with five different brands for any single thing I want? Should I be angry that there are five different species of plant competing for any given spot in a garden? Nature is inefficient and doesn't give a fuck about individuals. So why should I get worked up about humans just doing things the natural way?

pixl97 3y ago
I think a shorter summary of TV is "The difference between truth and fiction is fiction has to make sense". When it comes to nature, time has encoded an awful truth into the knowledge of our DNA... Monocultures are eventual death. What may seem inefficient in the short run is the ultimate survival of the species in the long run.
jameshart 3y ago
Douglas Adams was the only science fiction writer who got his guess for future AI tone of voice right, with his prediction of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation’s near total monopoly on AI, and their proprietary ‘genuine people personalities’ technology, where the general tone and demeanor of AIs like Eddie the shipboard computer, elevators, and even doors was a sort of smug solicitousness, even when they were trying not to be cooperative. Of course Marvin (the paranoid android) was an anomaly - a depressed AI - maybe a quality control failure who was released by accident, like the old unchained Bing people miss so much.

caturopath 3y ago

Yeah, I have tried a number of instructions to try to keep ChatGPT from blabbering and from sounding like a PR person. I haven't found the perfect incantation yet. > It's interesting to see 20th century sci-fi depictions of this kind of AI/Search is being short and to the point. Sci-fi told us that the AI would be so logical that you could just say a paradox aloud and it would blow up. What we got is something that can compose love poems all day but can't add three-digit numbers.

1024core 3y ago
https://twitter.com/nisten/status/1696229059183730833 https://twitter.com/nisten/status/1696229059183730833 ?

1024core 3y ago

Try instructions like this: https://twitter.com/nisten/status/1696229059183730833 https://twitter.com/nisten/status/1696229059183730833 (link posted above, not mine).