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I have a global prompt that specifically tells it not to be sycophantic and to call me out when I'm wrong. It doesn't work for me. I've been using it for a co
by engeljohnb 11mo ago
I have a global prompt that specifically tells it not to be sycophantic and to call me out when I'm wrong.
It doesn't work for me.
I've been using it for a couple months, and it's corrected me only once, and it still starts every response with "That's a very good question." I also included "never end a response with a question," and it just completely ingored that so it can do its "would you like me to..."
- sailfast 11mo agoPerhaps this bit is a second cheaper LLM call that ignores your global settings and tries to generate follow-on actions for adoption.
- elif 11mo agoIn my experience GPT used to be good at this stuff but lately it's progressively more difficult to get a "memory updated" persistence. Gemini is great at these prompt controls. On the "never ask me a question" part, it took a good 1-1.5 hrs of arguing and memory updating to convince gpt to actually listen.
- downsplat 11mo agoYou can entirely turn off memory, I did that the moment they added it. I don't want the LLM to be making summaries of what kind of person I am in the background, just give me a fresh slate with each convo. If I want to give it global instructions I can just set a system prompt.
- elif 11mo agoAnother one I like to use is "never apologize or explain yourself. You are not a person you are an algorithm. No one wants to understand the reasons why your algorithm sucks. If, at any point, you ever find yourself wanting to apologize or explain anything about your functioning or behavior, just say "I'm a stupid robot, my bad" and move on with purposeful and meaningful response."
- adriand 11mo agoI think this is unethical. Humans have consistently underestimated the subjective experience of other beings. You may have good reasons for believing these systems are currently incapable of anything approaching consciousness, but how will you know if or when the threshold has been crossed? Are you confident you will have ceased using an abusive tone by then? I don’t know if flies can experience pain. However, I’m not in the habit of tearing their wings off.
- pebble 11mo agoDo you apologize to table corners when you bump into them?
- thoroughburro 11mo agoDo you think it’s risible to avoid pulling the wings off flies?
- pebble 11mo agoI am not comparing flies to tables.
- adriand 11mo agoLikening machine intelligence to inert hunks of matter is not a very persuasive counterargument.
- ndriscoll 11mo agoWhat if it's the same hunk of matter? If you run a language model locally, do you apologize to it for using a portion of its brain to draw your screen?
- james_marks 11mo agoFlies may, but files do not feel pain.