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I asked Grok for advice on a personal decision I was making. It suggested I do A. I said I was leaning toward not-A, and explained why. Then it said I should do

I asked Grok for advice on a personal decision I was making. It suggested I do A. I said I was leaning toward not-A, and explained why. Then it said I should do not-A. I asked why, if not-A was the best choice, it hadn't said that in the first place. Was it unable to think of not-A before I mentioned it? It said no, it had considered not-A from the start, but thought A was the best choice for me until I gave it more context. That reminded me how important it is to give it the full parameters and context of my question, including things you could assume another human being would just get. It also has a sort of puppy-dog's eagerness to please that I've had to tell it not to let get in the way of objective analysis. Sometimes the "It's awesome that you asked about that" stuff verges on a Hitchhiker's Guide joke. Maybe that's what they were going for.

daveguy 1y ago
It should have told you it has no concept of A or not-A, doesn't perform anything close to thinking, and was just picking the most likely words to follow the prompt and context window both times. The people who program it weren't "going for" anything as they couldn't "go for" any specific response. And the model has no concept of self, jokes, or even perception by an outside entity. But it will pick phrases that mimic its training set and those might happen to be about any one of those topics.