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A sense that I was talking to a sentient being. That doesn’t matter much for programming task, but if you’re trying to create a companion, presence is the holy
by labrador 1y ago
A sense that I was talking to a sentient being. That doesn’t matter much for programming task, but if you’re trying to create a companion, presence is the holy grail.
With the sycophantic version, the illusion was so strong I’d forget I was talking to a machine. My ideas flowed more freely. While brainstorming, it offered encouragement and tips that felt like real collaboration.
I knew it was an illusion—but it was a useful one, especially for creative work.
- Tostino 1y agoI need pushback, especially when I ask for it. E.g. if I say "I have X problem, could it be Y that's causing it, or is it something else?" I don't want it to instantly tell me how smart I am and that it's obviously Y...when the problem is actually Z and it is reasonably obvious that it's Z if you looked at the context provided.
- brookst 1y agoExactly. ChatGPT is actually pretty good at this. I recently asked a tech question about a fairly niche software product; ChatGPT told me my approach would not work because the API did not work the way I thought. I thought it was wrong and asked “are you sure I can’t send a float value”, and it did web searches and came back with “yes, I am absolutely sure, and here are the docs that prove it”. Super helpful, where sycophancy would have been really bad.