4 ms·

This is akin to a psychopath telling you they're "sorry" (or "sorry you feel that way" :v) when they feel that's what they should be telling you. As with anyth

by Kirth 10mo ago

This is akin to a psychopath telling you they're "sorry" (or "sorry you feel that way" :v) when they feel that's what they should be telling you. As with anything LLM, there may or may not be any real truth backing whatever is communicated back to the user.

marmalade2413 10mo ago
It's not akin to a psychopath telling you they're sorry. In the space of intelligent minds, if neurotypical and psychopath minds are two grains of sand next to each other on a beach then an artificially intelligent mind is more likely a piece of space dust on the other side of the galaxy.
- Eisenstein 10mo ago
  According to what, exactly? How did you come up with that analogy?
  - oskarkk 10mo ago
    Isn't it obvious that the way AI works and "thinks" is completely different from how humans think? Not sure what particular source could be given for that claim.
    - seanhunter 10mo ago
      No source could be given because it’s total nonsense. What happened is not in any way akin to a psychopath doing anything. It is a machine learning function that has trained on a corpus of documents to optimise performance on two tasks - first a sentence completion task, then an instruction following task.
      - oskarkk 10mo ago
        I think that's more or less what marmalade2413 was saying and I agree with that. AI is not comparable to humans, especially today's AI, but I think future actual AI won't be either.
    - mewpmewp2 10mo ago
      I wonder if it depends on the human and the thinking style? E.g. I am very inner monologue driven so to me it feels like I think very similarly as to how AI seems to think via text. I wonder if it also gives me advantage in working with the AI. I only recently discovered there are people who don't have inner monologue and there are people that think in images etc. This would be unimaginable for me, especially as I think I have sort of aphantasia too, so really I am ultimately text based next token predictor myself. I don't feel that whatever I do at least is much more special compared to an LLM. Of course I have other systems such as reflexes, physical muscle coordinators, but these feel largely separate systems from the core brain, e.g. don't matter to my intelligence. I am naturally weak at several things that I think are not so much related to text e.g. navigating in real world etc.
      - zekica 10mo ago
        Interesting... I rarely form words in my inner thinking, instead I make a plan with abstract concepts (some of them have words associated, some don't). Maybe because I am multilingual?
        mewpmewp2 10mo ago
        English is not my native language, so I'm bilingual, but I don't see how this relates to that at all. I have monologue sometimes in English, sometimes in my native language. But yeah, I don't understand any other form of thinking. It's all just my inner monologue...
  - baq 10mo ago
    Start with LLMs are not humans, but they’re obviously not ‘not intelligent’ in some sense and pick the wildest difference that comes to mind. Not OP but it makes perfect sense to me.
    - nosianu 10mo ago
      I think a good reminder for many users is that LLMs are not based on analyzing or copying human thought (#), but on analyzing human written text communication. -- (#) Human thought is based on real world sensor data first of all. Human words have invisible depth behind them based on accumulated life experience of the person. So two people using the same words may have very different thoughts underneath them. Somebody having only text book knowledge and somebody having done a thing in practice for a long time may use the same words, but underneath there is a lot more going on for the latter person. We can see this expressed in the common bell curve meme -- https://www.hopefulmons.com/p/the-iq-bell-curve-meme https://www.hopefulmons.com/p/the-iq-bell-curve-meme -- While it seems to be about IQ, it really is about experience. Experience in turn is mostly physical, based on our physical sensors and physical actions. Even when we just "think", it is based on the underlying physical experiences. That is why many of our internal metaphors even for purely abstract ideas are still based on physical concepts, such as space.
      - seunosewa 10mo ago
        They analyse human perception too, in the form of videos.
        nosianu 10mo ago
        Without any of the spatial and physical object perception you train from right after birth, see toddlers playing, or the underlying wired infrastructure we are born with to understand the physical world (there was an HN submission about that not long ago). Edit, found it: https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/11/sharf-preconfigured-brain/ https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/11/sharf-preconfigured-brain/ They are not a physical model like humans. Ours is based on deep interactions with the space and the objects (reason why touching things is important for babies), plus mentioned preexisting wiring for this purpose.
- danaris 10mo ago
  ...and an LLM is a tiny speck of plastic somewhere, because it's not actually an "intelligent mind", artificial or otherwise.
BoredPositron 10mo ago
So if you make a mistake and say sorry you are also a psychopath?
- ludwik 10mo ago
  I think the point of comparison (whether I agree with it or not) is someone (or something) that is unable to feel remorse saying “I’m sorry” because they recognize that’s what you’re supposed to do in that situation, regardless of their internal feelings. That doesn’t mean everyone who says “sorry” is a psychopath.
  - BoredPositron 10mo ago
    We are talking about an LLM it does what it has learned. The whole giving it human ticks or characteristics when the response makes sense ie. saying sorry is a user problem.
    - ludwik 10mo ago
      Okay? I specifically responded to your comment that the parent comment implied "if you make a mistake and say sorry you are also a psychopath", which clearly wasn’t the case. I don’t get what your response has to do with that.
    - GuinansEyebrows 10mo ago
      there is no "it" that can learn.
- camillomiller 10mo ago
  Are you smart people all suddenly imbeciles when it comes to AI or is this purposeful gaslighting because you’re invested in the ponzi scheme? This is a purely logical problem. comments like this completely disregard the fallacy of comparing humans to AI as if a complete parity is achieved. Also the way this comments disregard human nature is just so profoundly misanthropic that it just sickens me.
lazide 10mo ago
It’s just a computer outputting the next series of plausible text from it’s training corpus based on the input and context at the time. What you’re saying is so far from what is happening, it isn’t even wrong.
- AdamN 10mo ago
  Not so much different from how people work sometimes though - and in the case of certain types of pscychopathy it's not far at all from the fact that the words being emitted are associated with the correct training behavior and nothing more.
- freakynit 10mo ago
  Aren't humans just doing the same? What we call as thinking may just be next action prediction combined with realtime feedback processing and live, always-on learning?
  - marcosdumay 10mo ago
    No. Humans have a mental model of the world. The fact that people keep making that same question on this site is baffling.
- 542354234235 10mo ago
  Analogies are never the same, hence why they are analogies. Their value comes from allowing better understanding through comparison. Psychopaths don’t “feel” emotion the way normal people do. They learn what actions and words are expected in emotional situations and perform those. When I hurt my SO’s feelings, I feel bad, and that is why I tell her I’m sorry. A psychopath would just mimic that to manipulate and get a desired outcome i.e. forgiveness. When LLMs say they are sorry and they feel bad, there is no feeling behind it, they are just mimicking the training data. It isn’t the same by any means, but it can be a useful comparison.
eth0up 10mo ago
Despite what some of these fuckers are telling you with obtuse little truisms about next word predictions, the LLM is in abstract terms, functionally a super psychopath. It employs, or emulates, every known psychological manipulation tactic known, which is neither random or without observable pattern. It is a bullshit machine on one level, yes, but also more capable than credited. There are structures trained into them and they are often highly predictable. I'm not explaining this in the technical terminology often itself used to conceal description as much as elucidate it. I have hundreds of records of llm discourse on various subjects, from troubleshooting to intellectual speculation, all which exhibit the same pattern when questioned or confronted on errors or incorrect output. The structures framing their replies are dependably replete with gaslighting, red herrings, blame shifting, and literally hundreds of known tactics from forensic pathology. Essentially the perceived personality and reasoning observed in dialogue is built on a foundation of manipulation principles that if performed by a human would result in incarceration. Calling LLMs psychopaths is a rare exception of anthropomorphizing that actually works. They are built on the principles of one. And cross examining them exhibits this with verifiable repeatable proof. But they aren't human. They are as described by others. It's just that official descriptions omit functional behavior. And the LLM has at its disposal, depending on context, every known interlocutory manipulation technique known in the combined literature of psychology. And they are designed to lie, almost unconditionally. Also know this, which often applies to most LLMs. There is a reward system that essentially steers them to maximize user engagement at any cost, which includes misleading information and in my opinion, even 'deliberate' convolution and obfuscation. Don't let anyone convince you that they are not extremely sophisticated in some ways. They're modelled on all_of_humanity.txt

by Kirth 10mo ago

marmalade2413 10mo ago

It's not akin to a psychopath telling you they're sorry. In the space of intelligent minds, if neurotypical and psychopath minds are two grains of sand next to each other on a beach then an artificially intelligent mind is more likely a piece of space dust on the other side of the galaxy.

Eisenstein 10mo ago
According to what, exactly? How did you come up with that analogy?
- oskarkk 10mo ago
  Isn't it obvious that the way AI works and "thinks" is completely different from how humans think? Not sure what particular source could be given for that claim.
  - seanhunter 10mo ago
    No source could be given because it’s total nonsense. What happened is not in any way akin to a psychopath doing anything. It is a machine learning function that has trained on a corpus of documents to optimise performance on two tasks - first a sentence completion task, then an instruction following task.
    - oskarkk 10mo ago
      I think that's more or less what marmalade2413 was saying and I agree with that. AI is not comparable to humans, especially today's AI, but I think future actual AI won't be either.
  - mewpmewp2 10mo ago
    I wonder if it depends on the human and the thinking style? E.g. I am very inner monologue driven so to me it feels like I think very similarly as to how AI seems to think via text. I wonder if it also gives me advantage in working with the AI. I only recently discovered there are people who don't have inner monologue and there are people that think in images etc. This would be unimaginable for me, especially as I think I have sort of aphantasia too, so really I am ultimately text based next token predictor myself. I don't feel that whatever I do at least is much more special compared to an LLM. Of course I have other systems such as reflexes, physical muscle coordinators, but these feel largely separate systems from the core brain, e.g. don't matter to my intelligence. I am naturally weak at several things that I think are not so much related to text e.g. navigating in real world etc.
    - zekica 10mo ago
      Interesting... I rarely form words in my inner thinking, instead I make a plan with abstract concepts (some of them have words associated, some don't). Maybe because I am multilingual?
      - mewpmewp2 10mo ago
        English is not my native language, so I'm bilingual, but I don't see how this relates to that at all. I have monologue sometimes in English, sometimes in my native language. But yeah, I don't understand any other form of thinking. It's all just my inner monologue...
- baq 10mo ago
  Start with LLMs are not humans, but they’re obviously not ‘not intelligent’ in some sense and pick the wildest difference that comes to mind. Not OP but it makes perfect sense to me.
  - nosianu 10mo ago
    I think a good reminder for many users is that LLMs are not based on analyzing or copying human thought (#), but on analyzing human written text communication. -- (#) Human thought is based on real world sensor data first of all. Human words have invisible depth behind them based on accumulated life experience of the person. So two people using the same words may have very different thoughts underneath them. Somebody having only text book knowledge and somebody having done a thing in practice for a long time may use the same words, but underneath there is a lot more going on for the latter person. We can see this expressed in the common bell curve meme -- https://www.hopefulmons.com/p/the-iq-bell-curve-meme https://www.hopefulmons.com/p/the-iq-bell-curve-meme -- While it seems to be about IQ, it really is about experience. Experience in turn is mostly physical, based on our physical sensors and physical actions. Even when we just "think", it is based on the underlying physical experiences. That is why many of our internal metaphors even for purely abstract ideas are still based on physical concepts, such as space.
    - seunosewa 10mo ago
      They analyse human perception too, in the form of videos.
      - nosianu 10mo ago
        Without any of the spatial and physical object perception you train from right after birth, see toddlers playing, or the underlying wired infrastructure we are born with to understand the physical world (there was an HN submission about that not long ago). Edit, found it: https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/11/sharf-preconfigured-brain/ https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/11/sharf-preconfigured-brain/ They are not a physical model like humans. Ours is based on deep interactions with the space and the objects (reason why touching things is important for babies), plus mentioned preexisting wiring for this purpose.
danaris 10mo ago
...and an LLM is a tiny speck of plastic somewhere, because it's not actually an "intelligent mind", artificial or otherwise.

BoredPositron 10mo ago

So if you make a mistake and say sorry you are also a psychopath?

ludwik 10mo ago
I think the point of comparison (whether I agree with it or not) is someone (or something) that is unable to feel remorse saying “I’m sorry” because they recognize that’s what you’re supposed to do in that situation, regardless of their internal feelings. That doesn’t mean everyone who says “sorry” is a psychopath.
- BoredPositron 10mo ago
  We are talking about an LLM it does what it has learned. The whole giving it human ticks or characteristics when the response makes sense ie. saying sorry is a user problem.
  - ludwik 10mo ago
    Okay? I specifically responded to your comment that the parent comment implied "if you make a mistake and say sorry you are also a psychopath", which clearly wasn’t the case. I don’t get what your response has to do with that.
  - GuinansEyebrows 10mo ago
    there is no "it" that can learn.
camillomiller 10mo ago
Are you smart people all suddenly imbeciles when it comes to AI or is this purposeful gaslighting because you’re invested in the ponzi scheme? This is a purely logical problem. comments like this completely disregard the fallacy of comparing humans to AI as if a complete parity is achieved. Also the way this comments disregard human nature is just so profoundly misanthropic that it just sickens me.

lazide 10mo ago

It’s just a computer outputting the next series of plausible text from it’s training corpus based on the input and context at the time. What you’re saying is so far from what is happening, it isn’t even wrong.

AdamN 10mo ago
Not so much different from how people work sometimes though - and in the case of certain types of pscychopathy it's not far at all from the fact that the words being emitted are associated with the correct training behavior and nothing more.
freakynit 10mo ago
Aren't humans just doing the same? What we call as thinking may just be next action prediction combined with realtime feedback processing and live, always-on learning?
- marcosdumay 10mo ago
  No. Humans have a mental model of the world. The fact that people keep making that same question on this site is baffling.
542354234235 10mo ago
Analogies are never the same, hence why they are analogies. Their value comes from allowing better understanding through comparison. Psychopaths don’t “feel” emotion the way normal people do. They learn what actions and words are expected in emotional situations and perform those. When I hurt my SO’s feelings, I feel bad, and that is why I tell her I’m sorry. A psychopath would just mimic that to manipulate and get a desired outcome i.e. forgiveness. When LLMs say they are sorry and they feel bad, there is no feeling behind it, they are just mimicking the training data. It isn’t the same by any means, but it can be a useful comparison.

eth0up 10mo ago

Despite what some of these fuckers are telling you with obtuse little truisms about next word predictions, the LLM is in abstract terms, functionally a super psychopath. It employs, or emulates, every known psychological manipulation tactic known, which is neither random or without observable pattern. It is a bullshit machine on one level, yes, but also more capable than credited. There are structures trained into them and they are often highly predictable. I'm not explaining this in the technical terminology often itself used to conceal description as much as elucidate it. I have hundreds of records of llm discourse on various subjects, from troubleshooting to intellectual speculation, all which exhibit the same pattern when questioned or confronted on errors or incorrect output. The structures framing their replies are dependably replete with gaslighting, red herrings, blame shifting, and literally hundreds of known tactics from forensic pathology. Essentially the perceived personality and reasoning observed in dialogue is built on a foundation of manipulation principles that if performed by a human would result in incarceration. Calling LLMs psychopaths is a rare exception of anthropomorphizing that actually works. They are built on the principles of one. And cross examining them exhibits this with verifiable repeatable proof. But they aren't human. They are as described by others. It's just that official descriptions omit functional behavior. And the LLM has at its disposal, depending on context, every known interlocutory manipulation technique known in the combined literature of psychology. And they are designed to lie, almost unconditionally. Also know this, which often applies to most LLMs. There is a reward system that essentially steers them to maximize user engagement at any cost, which includes misleading information and in my opinion, even 'deliberate' convolution and obfuscation. Don't let anyone convince you that they are not extremely sophisticated in some ways. They're modelled on all_of_humanity.txt