8 ms·
I’m Dutch and we’re noted for our directness and bluntness. So my tolerance for fake flattery is zero. Every chat I start with an LLM, I prefix with “Be curt”.
by bartvk 1y ago
I’m Dutch and we’re noted for our directness and bluntness. So my tolerance for fake flattery is zero. Every chat I start with an LLM, I prefix with “Be curt”.
- cheschire 1y agoImagine what happens to Dutch culture when American trained AI tools force American cultural norms via the Dutch language onto the youngest generation. And I’m not implying intent here. It’s simply a matter of source material quantity. Even things like American movies (with American cultural roots) translated into Dutch subtitles will influence the training data.
- jstummbillig 1y agoWhat will happen? Californication has been around for a while, and, if anything, I would argue that AI is by design less biased than pop culture.
- cheschire 1y agoPop culture is not the intent of “study mode”.
- scott_w 1y agoYour comment reminds me of quirks of translations from Japanese to English where you see common phrases reused in the “wrong” context for English. “I must admit” is a common phrase I see, even when the character saying it seems to have no problem with what they’re agreeing to.
- sunaookami 1y ago"It can't be helped" grinds my gears.
- arrowsmith 1y agoThe Americanisation of European culture long predates LLMs.
- grues-dinner 1y agoEmbedding "your" AI at every level of everyone else's education systems seems like the setup for a flawless cultural victory in a particularly ham-fisted sci-fi allegory. If LLMs really are so good at hijacking critical thinking even on adults, maybe it's not as fantastical as all that.
- BolsunBacset 1y agoSocial media is already doing this to Europe yet everyone is sleep walking into it.
- airstrike 1y agoIn my experience, whenever you do that, the model then overindexes on criticism and will nitpick even minor stuff. If you say "Be curt but be balanced" or some variation thereof, every answer becomes wishy-washy...
- AznHisoka 1y agoYeah, when I tell it to "Just be honest dude" it then tells me I'm dead wrong. I inevitably follow up with "No, not that KIND of honest!"
- cruffle_duffle 1y agoMaybe we need to go like they do in the movies “set truthfulness to 95%, curtness at 67% and just a touch of dry british humor (10%)”
- tallytarik 1y agoI've tried variations of this. I find it will often cause it to include cringey bullshit phrases like: "Here's your brutally honest answer–just the hard truth, no fluff: [...]" I don't know whether that's better or worse than the fake flattery.
- BrawnyBadger53 1y agoSimilar experience, feels very ironic
- dcre 1y agoCurious whether you find this on the best models available. I find that Sonnet 4 and Gemini 2.5 Pro are much better at following the spirit of my system prompt rather than the letter. I do not use OpenAI models regularly, so I’m not sure about them.
- danielscrubs 1y agoThat is not the spirit nor the letter though.
- dcre 1y agoThat is a good point. I guess the reason that distinction came to mind is that what’s happening here is the LLM trying to manifest its obedience in letter (i.e., by saying it).
- arrowsmith 1y agoYou need a system prompt to get that behaviour? I find ChatGPT does it constantly as its default setting: "Let's be blunt, I'm not gonna sugarcoat this. Getting straight to the hard truth, here's what you could cook for dinner tonight. Just the raw facts!" It's so annoying it makes me use other LLMs.
- cruffle_duffle 1y agoIts response is still flattery, just packaged in a different form. Patronizing, actually.
- ggsp 1y agoI've seen a marked improvement after adding "You are a machine. You do not have emotions. You respond exactly to my questions, no fluff, just answers. Do not pretend to be a human. Be critical, honest, and direct." to the top of my personal preferences in Claude's settings.
- j_bum 1y agoI’ll have to give this a try. I’ve always included “Be concise. Excessive verbosity is a distraction.” But it doesn’t work much …
- siva7 1y agoSaved my sanity. Thanks
- arrowsmith 1y agoI need to use this in Gemini. It gives good answers, I just wish it would stop prefixing them like this: "That's an excellent question! This is an astute insight that really gets to the heart of the matter. You're thinking like a senior engineer. This type of keen observation is exactly what's needed." Soviet commissars were less obsequious to Stalin.
- croes 1y agoAre you telling me they lie to me and I‘m not the greatest programmer of all time?
- snoman 1y agoYou couldn’t be because I have it on good authority that I am.
- tempodox 1y agoObviously some of the invested money went into psychologists to get their victims totally hooked in no time. These machines will be the end of social media as we know it. Why would you chat with people when a bot can flatter you so much better?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- felipeerias 1y agoPerhaps you should consider adding “be more Dutch” to the system prompt. (I’m serious, these things are so weird that it would probably work.)
- bartvk 1y agoThat is funny, I’m going to test that!
- t0mas88 1y agoSame here. Together with putting random emojis in answers. It's so over the top that saying "Excellent idea, rocket emoji" is a running joke with my wife when the other says something obvious :-)
- nullc 1y agoThe gross sycophancy and bullshit flattery is a protective coloration like red berries. It's telling you that the output is poison.
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]