4 ms·

I'm trying to lose some weight, and while bored I pasted a few data points into Gemini to do some dumb extrapolation, just a list of dates and weights. No field

I'm trying to lose some weight, and while bored I pasted a few data points into Gemini to do some dumb extrapolation, just a list of dates and weights. No field names, no units. I specifically avoided mentioning anything that would trigger any tut-tutting about the whole thing being a dumb exercise. Just anonymous linear regression. Then when I finished I asked it to guess what we were talking about. It nailed it: the reasoning output was spot on, considering every clue: The amounts, the precision, the rate of decrease, the dates I had been asking about and human psychology. It briefly considered the chance of tracking some resource to plan for replacement but essentially said "nah human cares more about looking good this summer". Then it gave me all the caveats and reprimands...

landl0rd 1y ago
Why was it giving you caveats and reprimands about losing weight?
- fcatalan 1y ago
  Oh the usual "linear weight loss predictions might not hold", "if you are on a restrictive diet make sure you are supervised by a doctor" and so on.
  - staticman2 1y ago
    It'll likely start behaving differently if you respond by explaining why you found it's response offensive and condescending. The models tend to be pretty flexible in how they adapt to user preference if you call them out.
    - fcatalan 1y ago
      Oh I didn't mind it, the response is in fact right: it's not very realistic to extrapolate early diet results, and people come up with all kinds of potentially harmful crazy diets, so better to add the warning. I just wanted to emphasise that I deliberately avoided to drop any early clues about the nature of the numbers as I just wanted the (very probably wrong) results without any further comments, and it was interesting (maybe not really surprising) that the LLM would still easily guess what they were about when prompted
    - landl0rd 1y ago
      It's not incorrect, you drop water and glycogen quickly starting a diet. This isn't a "repeatable" gain unless you put it back on. Still I wish they were less prone to barfing ten pages of disclaimers and "safety" every response.

landl0rd 1y ago

Why was it giving you caveats and reprimands about losing weight?

fcatalan 1y ago
Oh the usual "linear weight loss predictions might not hold", "if you are on a restrictive diet make sure you are supervised by a doctor" and so on.
- staticman2 1y ago
  It'll likely start behaving differently if you respond by explaining why you found it's response offensive and condescending. The models tend to be pretty flexible in how they adapt to user preference if you call them out.
  - fcatalan 1y ago
    Oh I didn't mind it, the response is in fact right: it's not very realistic to extrapolate early diet results, and people come up with all kinds of potentially harmful crazy diets, so better to add the warning. I just wanted to emphasise that I deliberately avoided to drop any early clues about the nature of the numbers as I just wanted the (very probably wrong) results without any further comments, and it was interesting (maybe not really surprising) that the LLM would still easily guess what they were about when prompted
  - landl0rd 1y ago
    It's not incorrect, you drop water and glycogen quickly starting a diet. This isn't a "repeatable" gain unless you put it back on. Still I wish they were less prone to barfing ten pages of disclaimers and "safety" every response.