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do you also beg your toilet to flush?
by goopypoop 1y ago
do you also beg your toilet to flush?
- duggan 1y agoIf it could hold a conversation I might. I also believe AI is a tool, but I'm sympathetic to the idea that, due to some facet of human psychology, being "rude" might train me to be less respectful in other interactions. Ergo, I might be more likely to treat you like a toilet.
- Filligree 1y agoIt also makes the LLM work better. If you’re rude to it it won’t want to help as much.
- totallymike 1y agoI understand what you're saying, which is that the response it generates is influenced by your prompt, but feel compelled to observe that LLMs cannot want anything at all, since they are software and have no motivations. I'd probably have passed this over if it wasn't contextually relevant to the discussion, but thank you for your patience with my pedantry just the same.
- goopypoop 1y agoAny "conversation" with a machine is dehumanizing. Are you really in danger of forgetting the humanity of strangers because you didn't anthropomorphize a text generator? If so, I don't think etiquette is the answer
- duggan 1y agoWords can change minds, it doesn't seem like a huge leap. Your condescension is noted though.
- epiccoleman 1y agothe thing is, though, that the text generator self-anthropomorphizes. perhaps if an LLM were trained to be less conversational and more robotic, i would feel less like being polite to it. i never catch myself typing "thanks" to my shell for returning an `ls`.
- epiccoleman 1y agoif the primary mode of interaction with my toilet was conversational, then yeah, i'd probably be polite to the toilet. i might even feel a genuine sense of gratitude since it does provide a highly useful service.