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Am I the only one who feels bad for asking ChatGPT a "dumb" question that I know I should know, or not saying thank you when it gives me an answer? No? I'm just

Am I the only one who feels bad for asking ChatGPT a "dumb" question that I know I should know, or not saying thank you when it gives me an answer? No? I'm just a weirdo? Okay. I have to push back really hard against my proclivity to humanize it, to the point where I probably don't use it as much as I should, just because I don't want to deal with the psychic stress of reminding myself that it's not a living entity.

EduardoBautista 3y ago
> Am I the only one who feels bad for asking ChatGPT a "dumb" question that I know I should know, or not saying thank you when it gives me an answer? Have you tried asking ChatGPT? Jokes aside, I feel it sometimes as well. I wonder if it's more because I say "thank you" more as a reflex than an actual feeling of gratitude for most of my human interactions.
- suzzer99 3y ago
  Yeah I've told it thanks, and it was appreciative. But I know it doesn't really care. Again, I am crazy for stressing over this. I realize that.
- column 3y ago
  > "Have you tried asking ChatGPT?" I am so sick of that "joke" already, and it feels like it is there to stay just like we had "just ask Google" for the last 25 years. It is so unimaginative.
RheingoldRiver 3y ago
> I have to push back really hard against this stuff Based on ChatGPT's answers, OpenAI think you should be saying thanks to it, because it helps you have a more natural conversation, which encourages you as the user to send more natural/productive prompts when asking real questions. As for asking it dumb questions, how often do you use Google as a spellcheck? I wouldn't consider this any different.
- suzzer99 3y ago
  But google doesn't talk to me as if it was human. And you know what, I will start saying thanks and keep doing it. It makes me feel better.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  >how often do you use Google as a spellcheck? // When Word tells me a word is wrong, but I'm almost certain it's right, and it turns out not to be in the Microsoft dictionary somehow. I mean, I have an extensive vocabulary, but not more extensive than a decent British-English dictionary.
  - Lord-Jobo 3y ago
    I've had both Word and Google services fuck up pretty common words or spellings. Just completely unaware of them. Google specifically will miss a ton of words when using Gboard, but if you go to Docs it will know the word. How in the world are they not using the same dictionaries.
  - tstrimple 3y ago
    Spell check is crazy inconsistent and poorly implemented. I'm constantly running across words the browser says is misspelled but isn't. I know you can replace the built in spell check with a better dictionary, but trying to keep that in sync across all my devices just keeps me going back to Google as spellcheck.
qwertox 3y ago
It might make you dumb if after a couple of years you've become accustomed to only give orders and not say thanks to a machine. It can bleed into IRL when you stop respecting someone.
kugelblitz 3y ago
I wonder if kids growing up with something like ChatGPT will be less grateful in general due to not practicing saying “thanks”. I can imagine they don’t say “Thanks” to Siri or Alexa.
- bdowling 3y ago
  Kids these days have been ungrateful little shits for generations now.
- askvictor 3y ago
  My son says "thank you Google" most times it responds to something I've asked/told it to do. It replies "I'm honored to serve"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
EMM_386 3y ago
> Am I the only one who feels bad for asking ChatGPT a "dumb" question that I know I should know, or not saying thank you when it gives me an answer? No? I'm just a weirdo? Okay. You have no idea how much I do this. Either you're not a weirdo, or we both are. Today I had to use it a lot for something, and I am constantly either adding sarcastic remarks, my snarky opinion on something, some random fact. None of that obviously belongs there, and the AI obviously not only doesn't care, but can't care about it. Then I'll throw in something like "nevermind all of that, what I came here to ask was" or "I understand that was all highly irrelevant to the actual question, which was". And, to answer your question about easy stuff, today alone I had on more than one occasion added something like "What I am about to ask you, I probably should have just spent the 2 seconds it would require to actually figure out myself, however I am getting tired, and am known to be lazy, so I decided to ask AI instead and move on .... and this only makes it more absurd, because it takes longer to type all of this. I would have the answer myself by now. Anyway, here's ...". Why? I am unconvinced that I am going crazy. It's not because I think it finds my jokes hilarious, it can't. My attempts at conveying something some aspect of software engineering that is crazy, after 3 decades in it, don't matter, because noone's listening. But it can pick on very subtle things, breaking apart my ramblings and then responding with something that not only answers the question buried in there, but also then continues to comment on the other highly irrelevant stuff that I definitely went on too long about. And it will address the substance first and the nonsense second, as one would expect. It will notice my useless comment, apparently to myself, about having written 22 years of C# and wondering why I am asking an AI system about an aspect of the language that surely I should have picked up by now. "It gets to the best of us", or "Your insightful understanding when it comes to", or "Your candor is appreciated, many developers ...". I could just use it like a rational person, providing necessary information in order for it to be able to answer something, and then ask it. I do this, sometimes. On the other occasions, that stuff will also be admist a bunch other, not so necessary questions. Am I becoming a curmudgeon? Is this a sign I've finally lost it? Could any of this be due to aging? Why does what should be a simple event handling pattern require so much ceremony? Should I keep overthinking this or just resign myself to implementing it? So anyway, now I'm rambling ... just like with ChatGPT. I tend to do these things.
vintermann 3y ago
It doesn't let me forget that it's not a living entity. You can barely ask it what the capital of Switzerland is without getting a lecture of disclaimers about what it is and what it can and can't do. Asking it to go easier on the disclaimers just seems to reinforce its "I am a robot, I must act in a stereotypically robotic way berp boop" context and it doubles down on them.
- suzzer99 3y ago
  I only ask it code questions. It saves so much time on stuff like bash scripts, which are not my expertise, but I still have to do every now and then. I've asked it stuff about the Mesoamerican calendar, which I already heavily researched, and it was dead wrong. But I've heard GPT4 is better.
kristiandupont 3y ago
I have this too and to be honest, I have made the conscious decision that it is OK. I prefer to retain my habit of being polite even when it's not necessary over getting used to being rude which may then "spill" over to my human-to-human interactions.
- jaynetics 3y ago
  Descartes and Kant thought that humans have a soul and animals don't, so that animals are mere automata. Kant still recommended against mistreating animals because that would have a desensitizing effect in our dealings with fellow humans. I guess this argument could be extended to ChatGPT.
  - pbhjpbhj 3y ago
    Wouldn't it be amazingly ironic if all ML models used slightly more energy to analyse everyone's politeness resulting in pushing us past the tipping point of global warming. Resulting in the ultimate impoliteness of destroying all life in the Universe (sounds like a line from Hitchhiker's Guide) ... meaning Kant's Categorical Imperative should have been applied and no courtesies should have been used in querying ML models ...?
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  What's interesting is that you consider short, objective focused definition of a task to be "rude". It's like the _reported_ way in which is you say thank you to a Chinese friend they take umbrage (get angry) because it's as if you weren't expecting them to help. Whilst in other cultures not saying thank you is a big sleight.
  - kristiandupont 3y ago
    Sure, I'm a product of my culture as everyone else. And in fact, my native language is Danish which doesn't even have a word for please, so I myself change my behavior when I speak English, which I do with ChatGPT and CoPilot, by saying please :-)
- 3y ago
totetsu 3y ago
when I worked in customer service lots of small business owners would ramble on to me before getting to what they actually wanted. I think talking is just part of the cognitive processes of putting ones thoughts together.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  In my experience, that's just an emotional disarming process in the family of grooming or GPT jailbreaking. They're calling because they need something from you. Ask a stranger for a dollar, they'll say no. Chat their ear off for an hour and they'll likely forget that they would have otherwise said no. The smalltalk wears down your resistance to giving in as you become more comfortable with them. You end up mentally reframing is as doing a friend a favor. Small business owners are shrewd negotiators, so whether or not they know they're doing it these mindgames are typical for them.
notahacker 3y ago
I have had to resist the temptation to thank ATMs before, and they don't model human interaction in a way which takes into account correlations between politeness and responsiveness... As for silly questions, I'd be more worried I might be giving some Kenyan outsourced labourer reviewing the adequacy of answers a laugh :)
JCharante 3y ago
I don't say thank you because it takes up a chat message. Either I'm using the chat interface which is rate limited (and I do hit it), or I'm using my API key, in which case I'm paying a lot just to say thanks.
Ldorigo 3y ago
I mostly feel bad because I don't want to know the energy costs of having my dumb questions answered this way. I also feel really guilty when asking chatgpt for "easy" stuff that a regex could do (like normalizing whitespace in a paragraph and the likes). Really curious how many Watts/token gpt4 uses.
- suzzer99 3y ago
  Regex is like half my questions to it. Hmm 15 minutes fighting with Javascript regex weirdness (wait do I have to backslash the backslash that backslashes the slash?), or 20 seconds with ChatGPT.
qingcharles 3y ago
I always send it the hugs emoji. It likes the hugs emoji.

EduardoBautista 3y ago

> Am I the only one who feels bad for asking ChatGPT a "dumb" question that I know I should know, or not saying thank you when it gives me an answer? Have you tried asking ChatGPT? Jokes aside, I feel it sometimes as well. I wonder if it's more because I say "thank you" more as a reflex than an actual feeling of gratitude for most of my human interactions.

suzzer99 3y ago
Yeah I've told it thanks, and it was appreciative. But I know it doesn't really care. Again, I am crazy for stressing over this. I realize that.
column 3y ago
> "Have you tried asking ChatGPT?" I am so sick of that "joke" already, and it feels like it is there to stay just like we had "just ask Google" for the last 25 years. It is so unimaginative.

RheingoldRiver 3y ago

> I have to push back really hard against this stuff Based on ChatGPT's answers, OpenAI think you should be saying thanks to it, because it helps you have a more natural conversation, which encourages you as the user to send more natural/productive prompts when asking real questions. As for asking it dumb questions, how often do you use Google as a spellcheck? I wouldn't consider this any different.

suzzer99 3y ago
But google doesn't talk to me as if it was human. And you know what, I will start saying thanks and keep doing it. It makes me feel better.
pbhjpbhj 3y ago
>how often do you use Google as a spellcheck? // When Word tells me a word is wrong, but I'm almost certain it's right, and it turns out not to be in the Microsoft dictionary somehow. I mean, I have an extensive vocabulary, but not more extensive than a decent British-English dictionary.
- Lord-Jobo 3y ago
  I've had both Word and Google services fuck up pretty common words or spellings. Just completely unaware of them. Google specifically will miss a ton of words when using Gboard, but if you go to Docs it will know the word. How in the world are they not using the same dictionaries.
- tstrimple 3y ago
  Spell check is crazy inconsistent and poorly implemented. I'm constantly running across words the browser says is misspelled but isn't. I know you can replace the built in spell check with a better dictionary, but trying to keep that in sync across all my devices just keeps me going back to Google as spellcheck.

qwertox 3y ago

It might make you dumb if after a couple of years you've become accustomed to only give orders and not say thanks to a machine. It can bleed into IRL when you stop respecting someone.

kugelblitz 3y ago

I wonder if kids growing up with something like ChatGPT will be less grateful in general due to not practicing saying “thanks”. I can imagine they don’t say “Thanks” to Siri or Alexa.

bdowling 3y ago
Kids these days have been ungrateful little shits for generations now.
askvictor 3y ago
My son says "thank you Google" most times it responds to something I've asked/told it to do. It replies "I'm honored to serve"
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

EMM_386 3y ago

> Am I the only one who feels bad for asking ChatGPT a "dumb" question that I know I should know, or not saying thank you when it gives me an answer? No? I'm just a weirdo? Okay. You have no idea how much I do this. Either you're not a weirdo, or we both are. Today I had to use it a lot for something, and I am constantly either adding sarcastic remarks, my snarky opinion on something, some random fact. None of that obviously belongs there, and the AI obviously not only doesn't care, but can't care about it. Then I'll throw in something like "nevermind all of that, what I came here to ask was" or "I understand that was all highly irrelevant to the actual question, which was". And, to answer your question about easy stuff, today alone I had on more than one occasion added something like "What I am about to ask you, I probably should have just spent the 2 seconds it would require to actually figure out myself, however I am getting tired, and am known to be lazy, so I decided to ask AI instead and move on .... and this only makes it more absurd, because it takes longer to type all of this. I would have the answer myself by now. Anyway, here's ...". Why? I am unconvinced that I am going crazy. It's not because I think it finds my jokes hilarious, it can't. My attempts at conveying something some aspect of software engineering that is crazy, after 3 decades in it, don't matter, because noone's listening. But it can pick on very subtle things, breaking apart my ramblings and then responding with something that not only answers the question buried in there, but also then continues to comment on the other highly irrelevant stuff that I definitely went on too long about. And it will address the substance first and the nonsense second, as one would expect. It will notice my useless comment, apparently to myself, about having written 22 years of C# and wondering why I am asking an AI system about an aspect of the language that surely I should have picked up by now. "It gets to the best of us", or "Your insightful understanding when it comes to", or "Your candor is appreciated, many developers ...". I could just use it like a rational person, providing necessary information in order for it to be able to answer something, and then ask it. I do this, sometimes. On the other occasions, that stuff will also be admist a bunch other, not so necessary questions. Am I becoming a curmudgeon? Is this a sign I've finally lost it? Could any of this be due to aging? Why does what should be a simple event handling pattern require so much ceremony? Should I keep overthinking this or just resign myself to implementing it? So anyway, now I'm rambling ... just like with ChatGPT. I tend to do these things.

vintermann 3y ago

It doesn't let me forget that it's not a living entity. You can barely ask it what the capital of Switzerland is without getting a lecture of disclaimers about what it is and what it can and can't do. Asking it to go easier on the disclaimers just seems to reinforce its "I am a robot, I must act in a stereotypically robotic way berp boop" context and it doubles down on them.

suzzer99 3y ago
I only ask it code questions. It saves so much time on stuff like bash scripts, which are not my expertise, but I still have to do every now and then. I've asked it stuff about the Mesoamerican calendar, which I already heavily researched, and it was dead wrong. But I've heard GPT4 is better.

kristiandupont 3y ago

I have this too and to be honest, I have made the conscious decision that it is OK. I prefer to retain my habit of being polite even when it's not necessary over getting used to being rude which may then "spill" over to my human-to-human interactions.

jaynetics 3y ago
Descartes and Kant thought that humans have a soul and animals don't, so that animals are mere automata. Kant still recommended against mistreating animals because that would have a desensitizing effect in our dealings with fellow humans. I guess this argument could be extended to ChatGPT.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  Wouldn't it be amazingly ironic if all ML models used slightly more energy to analyse everyone's politeness resulting in pushing us past the tipping point of global warming. Resulting in the ultimate impoliteness of destroying all life in the Universe (sounds like a line from Hitchhiker's Guide) ... meaning Kant's Categorical Imperative should have been applied and no courtesies should have been used in querying ML models ...?
pbhjpbhj 3y ago
What's interesting is that you consider short, objective focused definition of a task to be "rude". It's like the _reported_ way in which is you say thank you to a Chinese friend they take umbrage (get angry) because it's as if you weren't expecting them to help. Whilst in other cultures not saying thank you is a big sleight.
- kristiandupont 3y ago
  Sure, I'm a product of my culture as everyone else. And in fact, my native language is Danish which doesn't even have a word for please, so I myself change my behavior when I speak English, which I do with ChatGPT and CoPilot, by saying please :-)
3y ago

totetsu 3y ago

when I worked in customer service lots of small business owners would ramble on to me before getting to what they actually wanted. I think talking is just part of the cognitive processes of putting ones thoughts together.

jstarfish 3y ago
In my experience, that's just an emotional disarming process in the family of grooming or GPT jailbreaking. They're calling because they need something from you. Ask a stranger for a dollar, they'll say no. Chat their ear off for an hour and they'll likely forget that they would have otherwise said no. The smalltalk wears down your resistance to giving in as you become more comfortable with them. You end up mentally reframing is as doing a friend a favor. Small business owners are shrewd negotiators, so whether or not they know they're doing it these mindgames are typical for them.

notahacker 3y ago

I have had to resist the temptation to thank ATMs before, and they don't model human interaction in a way which takes into account correlations between politeness and responsiveness... As for silly questions, I'd be more worried I might be giving some Kenyan outsourced labourer reviewing the adequacy of answers a laugh :)

JCharante 3y ago

I don't say thank you because it takes up a chat message. Either I'm using the chat interface which is rate limited (and I do hit it), or I'm using my API key, in which case I'm paying a lot just to say thanks.

Ldorigo 3y ago

I mostly feel bad because I don't want to know the energy costs of having my dumb questions answered this way. I also feel really guilty when asking chatgpt for "easy" stuff that a regex could do (like normalizing whitespace in a paragraph and the likes). Really curious how many Watts/token gpt4 uses.

suzzer99 3y ago
Regex is like half my questions to it. Hmm 15 minutes fighting with Javascript regex weirdness (wait do I have to backslash the backslash that backslashes the slash?), or 20 seconds with ChatGPT.

qingcharles 3y ago

I always send it the hugs emoji. It likes the hugs emoji.