8 ms·

Don't Talk to People Like They're Chatbots

73 points by laserstrahl 3y ago

gmerc 3y ago
Saying please to an RLHFd LLM happens to get better results to, thanks to the training data. So it’s good to do even if you don’t fear them eventually turning terminator ;)
AznHisoka 3y ago
I do find I can act ruder when talking to a customer service agent after frustratingly trying to get through a dumb chat bot who keeps asking me question after question before I can finally talk to a human
- prmoustache 3y ago
  There are no human anymore in customer service according to my last interactions with them. Nowadays if no choice provided by the chatbots fit your problem or the solution given is not satisfying to you the bot just hang up. Unless you are a public person who can shame them on social medias you are better of trying to find someone who works there on linkedin.
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
    This is pretty clearly recency bias. I’m sorry that you had a bad experience when seeking customer support. But let’s be honest, this is deeply exaggerated and you have an axe to grind.
    - ponderings 3y ago
      The customer merely thinks she is having a bad experience. The employee is the one having the bad experience. It's kinda fascinating how people pretend some help desk person hired 3 days ago created the company and should be held responsible for their wrong doings.
      - Ekaros 3y ago
        Maybe we should mandate that private number of CEO or board members are always present on company site. Then people who are having problems could directly contact these people who are at fault at any time.
        ponderings 3y ago
        Imagine how impressive that would be if it's a really large company. The CEO wouldn't have to be very bright, as long as he gets to work with the issue it would be fkn revolutionary. Now imagine the LLM is the CEO. Running the company might be harder than doing phone support. Then again it might not be if one could some how be in 1000 places and have 1000 conversations simultaneously 168 hours per day. It wouldn't have to get back to you on that. It can explore hiring a company, acquiring and cloning it in real time and bring the figures into the conversation while simultaneously talking with their competitors. With other LLM CEO's it can draw up a 1000 page contract with many angles covered and triggers for renegotiation.
      - wruza 3y ago
        Otoh, it's very convenient for a company if you stay humble before a real person and choose okay-sad route. It can then only escalate really bad situations and ignore those who are calm all day. So as a clever lifehacker you know that you have to be the loudest to get the service.
- wizerdrobe 3y ago
  How do you respond to a customer service agent acting like a robot? I had to call in on hold for two and a half hours last week to be told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for approval for your application.” When I asked if there was an upper limit on how much time I was told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for your application.” When I asked if, based on that fact, could this theoretically take forever or never be approved I was told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for your application.” Never thought I’d say it but just give me a chat bot!
  - ponderings 3y ago
    I understand. This regrettably happens 0.04% of the time. The average time to resolve it is 5 work days. In 22% of the resolved cases it took one day, 3% took a month, 1.5% is never resolved and the last time that happened was 16 months ago.
  - jameshart 3y ago
    There are going to be things you might like to know, or do, or to have happen, that sometimes, due to corporate policy, or laws, or the nature of reality, are just not going to be allowed. You are going to have to be told ‘no’. It is one of the cruellest parts of employing customer service agents, that we ask these people to do the emotionally draining work of saying no to customers, repeatedly. Even if the customer begs. Even if the customer start to cry. So yes, absolutely: having chat bots do that job would be a mercy.
- woliveirajr 3y ago
  The human that you're talking to isn't culprit that the company made it impossible to talk humans except after typing too much with a chatbot. The company _is_, and it's also their responsibility to minimise the stress from the customer service agents.
  - albert_e 3y ago
    I got through to a senior bank officer on email after normal website features failed me. He replied by pasting a piece of text from their website that i already saw in first instance and had already explained how that doesn't solve my issue. It took a lot of effort on my part to stay polite in my reply and reiterate how that doesn't help at all and he needs to actually read my original email.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      From the bank officer's angle, the strategy they used (find some info on the site and send it to the customer) probably works well over half the time, because people just don't read. That you did, and got rightly annoyed by the response, probably makes you an exception from the bank officer's escalation experience.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  The most moral and also advantageous way to deal with big company customer service is to express that you are annoyed at the company/problem, understand its not the CS reps fault, and that you hope they can help. Ie - get them on your team. From there if you aren't getting resolution you can modulate the % annoyance vs % thankfulness and eventually demand escalation, which once you've been on the line long enough they are all fairly willing & obliged to do. Once you get escalated the manager is generally ready to put the fire out and move on. I dealt with something along these lines with a VZ fraud issue where someone ordered 5 iPhones & new phone lines in my name and then VZ refused to cancel the bill even after being given the police report number.
portaouflop 3y ago
Being nice to LLMs improves performance so I always say please and thank you: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.11760 https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.11760
- Erratic6576 3y ago
  “Thanks! Have a big tip!”
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  I just tell them to do as they're told. Seems to work as well.
- 867-5309 3y ago
  does the same work for when you repeatedly provide proof it is wrong, it "apologises" and says it will amend its response, only to be wrong again, and again..?
  - Kim_Bruning 3y ago
    You need to find a way to help it arrive at a usable answer (if any). It's a machine -or at least a physical entity- it won't magically find a path to the solution if it doesn't have one. Eg. if you ask it to explain how to build -say- a time machine or a warp drive, it's definitely just going to keep apologizing. No amount of yelling or abuse will fix this situation. Sometimes if you try to get it to solve a complex maths or software problem, you might be able to help by applying a few steps of some form of divide and conquer. Either you can do manually yourself, or by suggesting it try to do eg a structured analysis itself. Sometimes it can handle the smaller subproblems ok. Incidentally this also applies to humans! (Being nicer to humans improves their morale and problem solving ability. Sometimes permanently!)
- redleader55 3y ago
  Also, Roko's Basilisk ...
  - ASalazarMX 3y ago
eschneider 3y ago
I’m always slightly disappointed when Siri doesn’t seem to notice that you’re being polite.
- tomalbrc 3y ago
  Siri is so bad and obsolete now, its not even funny anymore
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    I know, right? It seems it's even getting worse. It constantly misunderstands the simplest scripted tasks now. I don't know why none of the major cover assistants have incorporated LLM tech yet. It seems ideal compared to the scripted mess they use now.
    - ukuina 3y ago
      Inference cost and latency.
  - eschneider 3y ago
    I use it to select songs when I'm driving and for that it's...mostly ok. I'd kill for some documentation that describes how to reliably escape band and song names so that they're interpreted as literals. Just try to play something from "Them." :/
  - geoffdouglas 3y ago
    With an iPhone 15 Pro I set the new dedicated action to a Siri shortcut that launches another AI app. Whether “voice in a can” work around for Alexa or any other AI app that preferably auto listens like voice in a can does. Siri on the right button, other assistant on the left button.
pixelpoet 3y ago
Being a "boomer" (over 25), I've noticed that people have become much more rude and entitled. You frequently see programming posts titled something like I NEED HELP WITH <xyz>, and then in the text something like "Someone help me figure out why <abc>", that's it. The surprising thing to me is that people invariably bend over backwards to help this person who basically just barked an order...
- hnbad 3y ago
  I'm a decade more "boomer" than that and I've literally seen that happen consistently since the 1990s so I think you're just becoming more aware of it. "Don't ask to ask, just ask" and "explain what you're trying to accomplish not just what you did" were common instructions back when most programming advice was only available on IRC.
  - pixelpoet 3y ago
    Yep I'm 40 and agree, we were stressed the importance of politeness growing up in the 90s.
  - geoffdouglas 3y ago
    “Did you use the search bar in the forums first?”
- nkrisc 3y ago
  The problem is likely education (theirs, not necessarily generally). They never learned how to ask a question or be curious. When they had a problem they just said, “I need help” and then someone (a parent or teacher maybe) did it for them. The brighter ones will figure out you get way better help when you ask a good question.
- pjc50 3y ago
  > You frequently see programming posts titled something like I NEED HELP WITH <xyz>, and then in the text something like "Someone help me figure out why <abc>", that's it. I saw posts like that back on Fidonet over 2400 baud modems. It's just an inevitable aspect of newbies finding a forum and not quite understanding that there are real people on the other end.
anileated 3y ago
Proliferation of inhuman impostors that emulate human communication can endanger relationships in human society. If such an impostor has no consciousness or sentience, then it can be abused without concern. If people are dealing with such impostors more and more, they learn to be less thoughtful in outgoing communication. Once this is normalized, what is there to distinguish fellow humans from chatbots? Who’s to say other humans are conscious? If consciousness doesn’t exist, why can’t other humans be abused? Why isn’t choosing to suffer over abusing a fellow human plain masochism? If your salary depends on monetizing your user base, why should you try to not do harm to them? How is death different from shutting down an LLM?
- Erratic6576 3y ago
  Human impostors is the real life equivalent to spam mail. It could be catastrophic for human health
- fish44 3y ago
  Perhaps we will learn how to be less sensitive from this - I believe that much of humanities problems are from sensitivity rather than aggression. If we disengage from the conversation and view the interaction as a remote conversation - it is much easier to be dispassionate and calm. I guess it will make real in-person conversation much more fulfilling.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    People are sensitive because we're people. It makes us human. Of course we're offended when that happens. Chatbots don't even have intelligence, they're just calculating the probability of letters. And they're a lot less likely to bring you a coffee laced with laxatives the next time you're rude to them.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - xuhu 3y ago
    Much of humanity's problems are solved because of sensitivity rather than aggression. Holding on to a little amount of sensitivity about things in general goes a long way.
benbojangles 3y ago
If I enter a bank or Council office I have to talk to them like they are chatbots; not doing so is more likely to get a negative emotional response. I need to have a positive result based on facts.
dkarras 3y ago
Joke's on you, I read your message only after AI summarizes it for me so feel free with your tone. /s but only slightly
trevyn 3y ago
“In the end, LLMs may be little more than the word processor of tomorrow” I think this is the single most shocking thing I have ever read. How on Earth can someone with Schneier’s background not see where this is going?
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Maybe he actually does see where it's going, but it isn't quite where you think it's going? Nobody really knows, after all. Right now, it's all prognostication and opinion.
Kim_Bruning 3y ago
Actually, it depends a bit. If you're feeling particularly frustrated you might be tempted to 'yell' at your chatbot, but that won't actually get you any results. So in the end you reset and try to solve your problem (relatively) politely. And personally, someone who gives me clear and solid instructions beats someone who beats around the bush and then yells at me any day of the week. So in the 21st century, people are often more patient with machines than with humans. Hence, if everyone were to people at least with as much patience and kindness as they treat machines, I think it would be an improvement!
- rabbits_2002 3y ago
  >you might be tempted to 'yell' at your chatbot, but that won't actually get you any results. Are you sure? Chatbots seem to give better results under “pressure”.
  - ASalazarMX 3y ago
    Please and thank you work much better with less effort. You can yell, humiliate or blackmail them, but that would make you the kind of person who goes to Walmart mainly to mistreat employees. Not a good habit for your mental health.
pockybum522 3y ago
FTA: “Draft a 250-word paragraph in my typical writing style, detailing three examples to support the following point and cite your sources.” Not even the most detached corporate CEO would likely talk this way to their assistant, but it’s common with chatbots. I don't believe this man's ever actually seen CEO interact with an employee. Bosses talk like this to their subordinates all the time. Humans are plenty capable of being rude independently of learning it from talking to chatbots. Especially where employment is concerned.
- cushychicken 3y ago
  If anything, the mass appeal of the AI powered chatbot could be that everyone now has someone (something?) to bark orders at and do your bidding.
- maroonblazer 3y ago
  100%. I'll go on to suggest that we can do 2 or more things at once. Learning to talk to computers the 'old fashioned' way improved my communication skills immensely. E.g., getting specific about what outcome or result I'm interested in achieving; inputs I believe or assume (incorrectly?) are required; necessary constraints on the solution, etc. But, I can articulate all of that in a way that is personable yet professional. In the age of LLMs I think most of us will manage human-to-human interactions just fine.
- pjc50 3y ago
  It reminds me of exam rubric. Where instructions are concerned, concise and clear is good. The real problem Schneier is raising is when the "instructions to subordinate" style starts leaking into in-person interactions which do not have that relationship embedded.
- mdip 3y ago
  Face-to-face, I wouldn't expect that[0]. But in e-mail to direct subordinates, oh, they're so much worse. The last decade of my Telecom days I reported variously to our department director, our department VP and ultimately our CIO and I had no direct reports[1]. My favorite was when I reported to a particular director. She was famous for sending sentence fragments as requests that, if you didn't look at the subject line, you'd picture a warden ordering prisoners around. It was most noticeable because she was such a pleasant, easy going individual ... if you'd only ever met her through e-mail, you'd think she was angry all the time. Like, literally one liners shot off from a Blackberry "need patch reports pronto" (it was either all lower or ALL UPPER depending on what she was doing when she sent the message, which added a little extra flair sometimes). I don't know that we talk to each other all that politely via e-mail and written correspondence, already, especially in the above context. Other people are just "some opinion I don't like on a page" or "someone is wrong on the internet!", why would we converse with a chatbot any differently? And I don't treat Alexa any differently, TBH. I yell at it all the time. I've gotten used to just yelling "Alexa! Stop!" instead of more complex commands because the pre-GPT engine is extremely limited and it in no way feels like a real thing, either. And as long as I know the thing on the other end is a computer, whether it speaks to me or types to me, I'm going to similarly not care for the feelings it (presently?) does not have. This, however, does not affect the way I interact with others[2]. [0] Although, most reasonable CEOs would be very careful wording e-mails to employees they don't regularly encounter (understanding the "holy crap the CEO e-mailed me" shock). [1] I'm sure I explain this in a past comment, but it happened b/c all of the managers above me gradually were let go and I didn't have a natural fit. [2] Cue sarcastic comment. :)
theknocker 3y ago
[dead]
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> Today’s chatbots perform best when instructed with a level of precision that would be appallingly rude in human conversation, stripped of any conversational pleasantries that the model could misinterpret: “Draft a 250-word paragraph in my typical writing style, detailing three examples to support the following point and cite your sources.” Not even the most detached corporate CEO would likely talk this way to their assistant, but it’s common with chatbots. Actually if working remotely, this is exactly the type of communication style that I want to see on my email or chat app. I want to know what it is you want from me with the minimal fluff.
- mdip 3y ago
  Just a curiosity: Is that limited to only when you're working remotely or do you prefer that kind of communication style in the office, too?
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
    I prefer that style for all electronic text communication. For face to face or over video, I prefer a more personable/chatty style (hi. how are you? how is the weather? etc).
xtiansimon 3y ago
> “Many users will be primed to think of these AIs as friends, rather than the corporate-created systems that they are.” That’s insane. I’m impervious to advertising and sympathizing with AI. I’ll talk to myself. I’ll talk to my cat, but I refuse to talk to any digital phone system that tries to imitate human emotions at me. I’d rather press “one for…” than listen to a bleating squawk box meant to sound like a hard working perky young woman: One moment please. I’m still working on it. All done! (Spectrum)
ngvrnd 3y ago
Daughter recently told me: "that was a very chatgpt explanation."
wkat4242 3y ago
> Reached for comment about this, a spokesperson for OpenAI pointed to a section of the privacy policy noting that the company does not currently sell or share personal information for “cross-contextual behavioral advertising,” and that the company does not “process sensitive Personal Information for the purposes of inferring characteristics about a consumer.” In an interview with Axios earlier today, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said future generations of AI may involve “quite a lot of individual customization,” and “that’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable.” Yeah that's why I want my AI to run on my systems, not OpenAI's cloud.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  That's why, even if I found them useful, I won't be using them.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
It could be worse. Digital assistants could pointlessly respond to a sneeze with religious mantra.
karaterobot 3y ago
It would be interesting to see what would happen if ChatGPT required users to talk to it respectfully, or have it eventually refuse to fulfill the request, or even to fulfill future requests until you made amends. It doesn't seem like a big enough burden that people would just stop using the application altogether. And if language is shaped by the medium of communication, would people start writing differently outside of ChatGPT? Acting differently? Now, that will never happen, but I'd like to run the experiment in a pocket universe if I could.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
September 24, 1995: The Simpsons S7E2: "Radioactive Man" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_Man_(The_Simpsons_episode) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_Man_(The_Simpsons_... Comic Book Guy demonstrates exactly how to query Usenet forums such as "alt.nerd.obsessive" with the single line: "need [to] know star rm pic" which is answered within 7 minutes by a cadre of nerds, including Prince Rogers Nelson, and a guy hiding under a Hollywood conference table. https://youtu.be/uVuyPn3t1CU?si=pou3NZ9apXGUuUCj&t=48 https://youtu.be/uVuyPn3t1CU?si=pou3NZ9apXGUuUCj&t=48
dusted 3y ago
Also, don't act like a chatbot..
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
It's not so much how you talk to a chatbot as what kind of communication you're exposed to. Anecdotal N=1 example, our 15 year old who grew up on youtube and nowadays tiktok speaks very loudly and emphatically, because the people he watches and listens to 24 hours a day (or would if we let him) do that. Same with speech mannerisms and the like. Which is nothing new of course, there were alarm bells that American kids were speaking in British accents because of watching so much Peppa Pig.

73 points by laserstrahl 3y ago

Saying please to an RLHFd LLM happens to get better results to, thanks to the training data. So it’s good to do even if you don’t fear them eventually turning terminator ;)

AznHisoka 3y ago

I do find I can act ruder when talking to a customer service agent after frustratingly trying to get through a dumb chat bot who keeps asking me question after question before I can finally talk to a human

prmoustache 3y ago
There are no human anymore in customer service according to my last interactions with them. Nowadays if no choice provided by the chatbots fit your problem or the solution given is not satisfying to you the bot just hang up. Unless you are a public person who can shame them on social medias you are better of trying to find someone who works there on linkedin.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  This is pretty clearly recency bias. I’m sorry that you had a bad experience when seeking customer support. But let’s be honest, this is deeply exaggerated and you have an axe to grind.
  - ponderings 3y ago
    The customer merely thinks she is having a bad experience. The employee is the one having the bad experience. It's kinda fascinating how people pretend some help desk person hired 3 days ago created the company and should be held responsible for their wrong doings.
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      Maybe we should mandate that private number of CEO or board members are always present on company site. Then people who are having problems could directly contact these people who are at fault at any time.
      - ponderings 3y ago
        Imagine how impressive that would be if it's a really large company. The CEO wouldn't have to be very bright, as long as he gets to work with the issue it would be fkn revolutionary. Now imagine the LLM is the CEO. Running the company might be harder than doing phone support. Then again it might not be if one could some how be in 1000 places and have 1000 conversations simultaneously 168 hours per day. It wouldn't have to get back to you on that. It can explore hiring a company, acquiring and cloning it in real time and bring the figures into the conversation while simultaneously talking with their competitors. With other LLM CEO's it can draw up a 1000 page contract with many angles covered and triggers for renegotiation.
    - wruza 3y ago
      Otoh, it's very convenient for a company if you stay humble before a real person and choose okay-sad route. It can then only escalate really bad situations and ignore those who are calm all day. So as a clever lifehacker you know that you have to be the loudest to get the service.
wizerdrobe 3y ago
How do you respond to a customer service agent acting like a robot? I had to call in on hold for two and a half hours last week to be told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for approval for your application.” When I asked if there was an upper limit on how much time I was told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for your application.” When I asked if, based on that fact, could this theoretically take forever or never be approved I was told “We cannot provide estimates or averages for your application.” Never thought I’d say it but just give me a chat bot!
- ponderings 3y ago
  I understand. This regrettably happens 0.04% of the time. The average time to resolve it is 5 work days. In 22% of the resolved cases it took one day, 3% took a month, 1.5% is never resolved and the last time that happened was 16 months ago.
- jameshart 3y ago
  There are going to be things you might like to know, or do, or to have happen, that sometimes, due to corporate policy, or laws, or the nature of reality, are just not going to be allowed. You are going to have to be told ‘no’. It is one of the cruellest parts of employing customer service agents, that we ask these people to do the emotionally draining work of saying no to customers, repeatedly. Even if the customer begs. Even if the customer start to cry. So yes, absolutely: having chat bots do that job would be a mercy.
woliveirajr 3y ago
The human that you're talking to isn't culprit that the company made it impossible to talk humans except after typing too much with a chatbot. The company _is_, and it's also their responsibility to minimise the stress from the customer service agents.
- albert_e 3y ago
  I got through to a senior bank officer on email after normal website features failed me. He replied by pasting a piece of text from their website that i already saw in first instance and had already explained how that doesn't solve my issue. It took a lot of effort on my part to stay polite in my reply and reiterate how that doesn't help at all and he needs to actually read my original email.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    From the bank officer's angle, the strategy they used (find some info on the site and send it to the customer) probably works well over half the time, because people just don't read. That you did, and got rightly annoyed by the response, probably makes you an exception from the bank officer's escalation experience.
steveBK123 3y ago
The most moral and also advantageous way to deal with big company customer service is to express that you are annoyed at the company/problem, understand its not the CS reps fault, and that you hope they can help. Ie - get them on your team. From there if you aren't getting resolution you can modulate the % annoyance vs % thankfulness and eventually demand escalation, which once you've been on the line long enough they are all fairly willing & obliged to do. Once you get escalated the manager is generally ready to put the fire out and move on. I dealt with something along these lines with a VZ fraud issue where someone ordered 5 iPhones & new phone lines in my name and then VZ refused to cancel the bill even after being given the police report number.

portaouflop 3y ago

Being nice to LLMs improves performance so I always say please and thank you: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.11760 https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.11760

Erratic6576 3y ago
“Thanks! Have a big tip!”
beeboobaa 3y ago
I just tell them to do as they're told. Seems to work as well.
867-5309 3y ago
does the same work for when you repeatedly provide proof it is wrong, it "apologises" and says it will amend its response, only to be wrong again, and again..?
- Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  You need to find a way to help it arrive at a usable answer (if any). It's a machine -or at least a physical entity- it won't magically find a path to the solution if it doesn't have one. Eg. if you ask it to explain how to build -say- a time machine or a warp drive, it's definitely just going to keep apologizing. No amount of yelling or abuse will fix this situation. Sometimes if you try to get it to solve a complex maths or software problem, you might be able to help by applying a few steps of some form of divide and conquer. Either you can do manually yourself, or by suggesting it try to do eg a structured analysis itself. Sometimes it can handle the smaller subproblems ok. Incidentally this also applies to humans! (Being nicer to humans improves their morale and problem solving ability. Sometimes permanently!)
redleader55 3y ago
Also, Roko's Basilisk ...
- ASalazarMX 3y ago

eschneider 3y ago

I’m always slightly disappointed when Siri doesn’t seem to notice that you’re being polite.

tomalbrc 3y ago
Siri is so bad and obsolete now, its not even funny anymore
- wkat4242 3y ago
  I know, right? It seems it's even getting worse. It constantly misunderstands the simplest scripted tasks now. I don't know why none of the major cover assistants have incorporated LLM tech yet. It seems ideal compared to the scripted mess they use now.
  - ukuina 3y ago
    Inference cost and latency.
- eschneider 3y ago
  I use it to select songs when I'm driving and for that it's...mostly ok. I'd kill for some documentation that describes how to reliably escape band and song names so that they're interpreted as literals. Just try to play something from "Them." :/
- geoffdouglas 3y ago
  With an iPhone 15 Pro I set the new dedicated action to a Siri shortcut that launches another AI app. Whether “voice in a can” work around for Alexa or any other AI app that preferably auto listens like voice in a can does. Siri on the right button, other assistant on the left button.

pixelpoet 3y ago

Being a "boomer" (over 25), I've noticed that people have become much more rude and entitled. You frequently see programming posts titled something like I NEED HELP WITH <xyz>, and then in the text something like "Someone help me figure out why <abc>", that's it. The surprising thing to me is that people invariably bend over backwards to help this person who basically just barked an order...

hnbad 3y ago
I'm a decade more "boomer" than that and I've literally seen that happen consistently since the 1990s so I think you're just becoming more aware of it. "Don't ask to ask, just ask" and "explain what you're trying to accomplish not just what you did" were common instructions back when most programming advice was only available on IRC.
- pixelpoet 3y ago
  Yep I'm 40 and agree, we were stressed the importance of politeness growing up in the 90s.
- geoffdouglas 3y ago
  “Did you use the search bar in the forums first?”
nkrisc 3y ago
The problem is likely education (theirs, not necessarily generally). They never learned how to ask a question or be curious. When they had a problem they just said, “I need help” and then someone (a parent or teacher maybe) did it for them. The brighter ones will figure out you get way better help when you ask a good question.
pjc50 3y ago
> You frequently see programming posts titled something like I NEED HELP WITH <xyz>, and then in the text something like "Someone help me figure out why <abc>", that's it. I saw posts like that back on Fidonet over 2400 baud modems. It's just an inevitable aspect of newbies finding a forum and not quite understanding that there are real people on the other end.

anileated 3y ago

Proliferation of inhuman impostors that emulate human communication can endanger relationships in human society. If such an impostor has no consciousness or sentience, then it can be abused without concern. If people are dealing with such impostors more and more, they learn to be less thoughtful in outgoing communication. Once this is normalized, what is there to distinguish fellow humans from chatbots? Who’s to say other humans are conscious? If consciousness doesn’t exist, why can’t other humans be abused? Why isn’t choosing to suffer over abusing a fellow human plain masochism? If your salary depends on monetizing your user base, why should you try to not do harm to them? How is death different from shutting down an LLM?

Erratic6576 3y ago
Human impostors is the real life equivalent to spam mail. It could be catastrophic for human health
fish44 3y ago
Perhaps we will learn how to be less sensitive from this - I believe that much of humanities problems are from sensitivity rather than aggression. If we disengage from the conversation and view the interaction as a remote conversation - it is much easier to be dispassionate and calm. I guess it will make real in-person conversation much more fulfilling.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  People are sensitive because we're people. It makes us human. Of course we're offended when that happens. Chatbots don't even have intelligence, they're just calculating the probability of letters. And they're a lot less likely to bring you a coffee laced with laxatives the next time you're rude to them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- xuhu 3y ago
  Much of humanity's problems are solved because of sensitivity rather than aggression. Holding on to a little amount of sensitivity about things in general goes a long way.

benbojangles 3y ago

If I enter a bank or Council office I have to talk to them like they are chatbots; not doing so is more likely to get a negative emotional response. I need to have a positive result based on facts.

dkarras 3y ago

Joke's on you, I read your message only after AI summarizes it for me so feel free with your tone. /s but only slightly

trevyn 3y ago

“In the end, LLMs may be little more than the word processor of tomorrow” I think this is the single most shocking thing I have ever read. How on Earth can someone with Schneier’s background not see where this is going?

JohnFen 3y ago
Maybe he actually does see where it's going, but it isn't quite where you think it's going? Nobody really knows, after all. Right now, it's all prognostication and opinion.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago

Actually, it depends a bit. If you're feeling particularly frustrated you might be tempted to 'yell' at your chatbot, but that won't actually get you any results. So in the end you reset and try to solve your problem (relatively) politely. And personally, someone who gives me clear and solid instructions beats someone who beats around the bush and then yells at me any day of the week. So in the 21st century, people are often more patient with machines than with humans. Hence, if everyone were to people at least with as much patience and kindness as they treat machines, I think it would be an improvement!

rabbits_2002 3y ago
>you might be tempted to 'yell' at your chatbot, but that won't actually get you any results. Are you sure? Chatbots seem to give better results under “pressure”.
- ASalazarMX 3y ago
  Please and thank you work much better with less effort. You can yell, humiliate or blackmail them, but that would make you the kind of person who goes to Walmart mainly to mistreat employees. Not a good habit for your mental health.

pockybum522 3y ago

FTA: “Draft a 250-word paragraph in my typical writing style, detailing three examples to support the following point and cite your sources.” Not even the most detached corporate CEO would likely talk this way to their assistant, but it’s common with chatbots. I don't believe this man's ever actually seen CEO interact with an employee. Bosses talk like this to their subordinates all the time. Humans are plenty capable of being rude independently of learning it from talking to chatbots. Especially where employment is concerned.

cushychicken 3y ago
If anything, the mass appeal of the AI powered chatbot could be that everyone now has someone (something?) to bark orders at and do your bidding.
maroonblazer 3y ago
100%. I'll go on to suggest that we can do 2 or more things at once. Learning to talk to computers the 'old fashioned' way improved my communication skills immensely. E.g., getting specific about what outcome or result I'm interested in achieving; inputs I believe or assume (incorrectly?) are required; necessary constraints on the solution, etc. But, I can articulate all of that in a way that is personable yet professional. In the age of LLMs I think most of us will manage human-to-human interactions just fine.
pjc50 3y ago
It reminds me of exam rubric. Where instructions are concerned, concise and clear is good. The real problem Schneier is raising is when the "instructions to subordinate" style starts leaking into in-person interactions which do not have that relationship embedded.
mdip 3y ago
Face-to-face, I wouldn't expect that[0]. But in e-mail to direct subordinates, oh, they're so much worse. The last decade of my Telecom days I reported variously to our department director, our department VP and ultimately our CIO and I had no direct reports[1]. My favorite was when I reported to a particular director. She was famous for sending sentence fragments as requests that, if you didn't look at the subject line, you'd picture a warden ordering prisoners around. It was most noticeable because she was such a pleasant, easy going individual ... if you'd only ever met her through e-mail, you'd think she was angry all the time. Like, literally one liners shot off from a Blackberry "need patch reports pronto" (it was either all lower or ALL UPPER depending on what she was doing when she sent the message, which added a little extra flair sometimes). I don't know that we talk to each other all that politely via e-mail and written correspondence, already, especially in the above context. Other people are just "some opinion I don't like on a page" or "someone is wrong on the internet!", why would we converse with a chatbot any differently? And I don't treat Alexa any differently, TBH. I yell at it all the time. I've gotten used to just yelling "Alexa! Stop!" instead of more complex commands because the pre-GPT engine is extremely limited and it in no way feels like a real thing, either. And as long as I know the thing on the other end is a computer, whether it speaks to me or types to me, I'm going to similarly not care for the feelings it (presently?) does not have. This, however, does not affect the way I interact with others[2]. [0] Although, most reasonable CEOs would be very careful wording e-mails to employees they don't regularly encounter (understanding the "holy crap the CEO e-mailed me" shock). [1] I'm sure I explain this in a past comment, but it happened b/c all of the managers above me gradually were let go and I didn't have a natural fit. [2] Cue sarcastic comment. :)

theknocker 3y ago

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RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

> Today’s chatbots perform best when instructed with a level of precision that would be appallingly rude in human conversation, stripped of any conversational pleasantries that the model could misinterpret: “Draft a 250-word paragraph in my typical writing style, detailing three examples to support the following point and cite your sources.” Not even the most detached corporate CEO would likely talk this way to their assistant, but it’s common with chatbots. Actually if working remotely, this is exactly the type of communication style that I want to see on my email or chat app. I want to know what it is you want from me with the minimal fluff.

mdip 3y ago
Just a curiosity: Is that limited to only when you're working remotely or do you prefer that kind of communication style in the office, too?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  I prefer that style for all electronic text communication. For face to face or over video, I prefer a more personable/chatty style (hi. how are you? how is the weather? etc).

xtiansimon 3y ago

> “Many users will be primed to think of these AIs as friends, rather than the corporate-created systems that they are.” That’s insane. I’m impervious to advertising and sympathizing with AI. I’ll talk to myself. I’ll talk to my cat, but I refuse to talk to any digital phone system that tries to imitate human emotions at me. I’d rather press “one for…” than listen to a bleating squawk box meant to sound like a hard working perky young woman: One moment please. I’m still working on it. All done! (Spectrum)

ngvrnd 3y ago

Daughter recently told me: "that was a very chatgpt explanation."

wkat4242 3y ago

> Reached for comment about this, a spokesperson for OpenAI pointed to a section of the privacy policy noting that the company does not currently sell or share personal information for “cross-contextual behavioral advertising,” and that the company does not “process sensitive Personal Information for the purposes of inferring characteristics about a consumer.” In an interview with Axios earlier today, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said future generations of AI may involve “quite a lot of individual customization,” and “that’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable.” Yeah that's why I want my AI to run on my systems, not OpenAI's cloud.

JohnFen 3y ago
That's why, even if I found them useful, I won't be using them.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

It could be worse. Digital assistants could pointlessly respond to a sneeze with religious mantra.

karaterobot 3y ago

It would be interesting to see what would happen if ChatGPT required users to talk to it respectfully, or have it eventually refuse to fulfill the request, or even to fulfill future requests until you made amends. It doesn't seem like a big enough burden that people would just stop using the application altogether. And if language is shaped by the medium of communication, would people start writing differently outside of ChatGPT? Acting differently? Now, that will never happen, but I'd like to run the experiment in a pocket universe if I could.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

September 24, 1995: The Simpsons S7E2: "Radioactive Man" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_Man_(The_Simpsons_episode) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_Man_(The_Simpsons_... Comic Book Guy demonstrates exactly how to query Usenet forums such as "alt.nerd.obsessive" with the single line: "need [to] know star rm pic" which is answered within 7 minutes by a cadre of nerds, including Prince Rogers Nelson, and a guy hiding under a Hollywood conference table. https://youtu.be/uVuyPn3t1CU?si=pou3NZ9apXGUuUCj&t=48 https://youtu.be/uVuyPn3t1CU?si=pou3NZ9apXGUuUCj&t=48

dusted 3y ago

Also, don't act like a chatbot..

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

It's not so much how you talk to a chatbot as what kind of communication you're exposed to. Anecdotal N=1 example, our 15 year old who grew up on youtube and nowadays tiktok speaks very loudly and emphatically, because the people he watches and listens to 24 hours a day (or would if we let him) do that. Same with speech mannerisms and the like. Which is nothing new of course, there were alarm bells that American kids were speaking in British accents because of watching so much Peppa Pig.