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What I'd like to know is why they write it all in the third person. One might expect a system prompt to use the word "you" a lot, but Anthropic don't do that an
by mike_hearn 1y ago
What I'd like to know is why they write it all in the third person. One might expect a system prompt to use the word "you" a lot, but Anthropic don't do that and there must be a reason.
- simonw 1y agoMy best guess is that this is a reflection of how these things actually work. When you "chat" with an LLM you are actually still participating in a "next token" prediction sequence. The trick to get it to behave like it is a chat is to arrange that sequence as a screenplay: User: five facts about squirrels Assistant: (provide five facts) User: two more Assistant: When you think about the problem like that, it makes sense that the LLM is instructed in terms of how that assistant should behave, kind of like screen directions.
- dcre 1y agoI bet it’s stronger than that, and they anchor a lot of the alignment training to the unique (ish) token of Claude.
- mike_hearn 1y agoBut if true, then why choose a real name and not a made up one? Maybe they only realized they needed to do that later? ChatGPT is a far more unique name than Claude is.
- dist-epoch 1y agoMaybe to avoid confusion. "you" is relative to point of view. "Claude" is an absolute reference to the model.