I am happy to hear that people say please and thank you. When Siri/Alexa came out, we taught the kids to always say please and thank you when addressing them. If you can be polite to an AI, then you can be polite to a human.
its a hammer, do you teach the kids to thank their tools?
I understand teaching the children respect and how to behave, but AI and Siri/Alexa are just tools. They don’t need to be anthropomorphizing ai, IMO that is dangerous on a humanity level scale.
Absolutely. But respect looks a lot different for each type of tool. For example:
use it for its intended purpose - e.g. don’t use a hammer to break up rocks, that’ll just break your hammer
maintain it - lube mechanical parts, clean anything that interacts with dirt, etc
replace when worn
keep tools organized
Thanking my hammer isn’t showing respect, putting it away when I’m done and using it only for intended uses does.
For an LLM, showing it respect is keeping queries direct so it doesn’t spend unnecessary resources trying to understand what you want. Thanking it does absolutely nothing.
Agree… and this should extend to resources as well. Not respecting nature has led us to this path. If anthropomorphizing the tools and resources helps then so be it.
Humans are dumb as nut and storytelling, storybooks , and anthropomorphizing and such is the most effective way to make em understand.
You are confusing consent with respect. Respect can be being afraid to put your fingers where they might get cut even after using a machine for 30 years. The moment you lose that fear and start doing whatever you want with the machine is when the troubles start. Respect can also be oiling a tool that needs to be for better longevity instead of leaving them full of rust at the bottom of the toolbox.
People don’t usually interact with a hammer by talking to it. They interact by holding it, placing it, hammering with it. Respect for a hammer (or similar tool) would be based around those kinds of actions.
Whereas people do interact with a chatbot by talking to it. So then respect for a chatbot would be built around what is said.
People can show respect for a hammer, a house, a dinner prepared by their spouse, their spouse, a chatbot, etc… but respect for each of those things will look a bit different.
Hey, whatever heuristic works for helping people show and feel respect for their environment and the things in it is good in my book. If you’re capable of respecting others in your space without needing to be polite to your inanimate tools, then good on you. Not everyone is like that and if it helps someone feel peace with their surroundings to imagine everything around them has some kind of soul or feelings worthy of consideration, then I’ll take that, too.
Of course, there are limits to everything and if a tool irreparably breaks, hopefully someone is able to discard it accordingly. Pathological hoarding of useless objects is a thing, too, after all.
I thank my car when it alerts me that I left the lights on or my keys in the ignition. I’m not anthropomorphizing my car, I’m practicing appreciation for the benefits my tools provide.
Kondo literally has you thanking items for their service as a way to uncouple and declutter. “Humans will pack bond with anything” is a trope for a reason.
The purpose for Marie Kondo is to alleviate the guilt for getting rid of a thing you liked at one point. If you thank it, you’re essentially convincing yourself that it has fulfilled its purpose and so there’s no guilt in discarding it.
LLMs don’t fit into that. What purpose could thanking it possibly have other than anthropomorphizing it? If you’re trying to break your attachment to an LLM, sure, thank it for the time you spent with it so you can let it go. But thanking it for providing an answer is just silly.
But the interaction is different. I have a simple example, would you be upset if you see some people beat up a chair? Probably not, but if you see people beat up something that moves, talks and behaves like a person or an animal you might get upset. Both are just things, but the interaction is still different. So we should teach our kids to be kind in interactions with live line things so that they behave properly when interacting with people.
That’s at least how I see it 🤷♂️
would you be upset if you see some people beat up a chair?
I do. Breaking something just because you’re upset is counter-productive and just creates waste, so it frustrates me.
I also think being polite to an LLM is stupid and wasteful. Just be direct about what you need a response to and move on. Don’t be rude (that’s also counter-productive), just be direct. For example, “What’s the capital of Bulgaria?” instead of, “If you could be so kind, could you look up the capital of Bulgaria for me please? Thank you!” Using a tool efficiently is a way of showing it some level of respect.
Tools are tools. Use and maintain them properly, and then move on to the next task.
Perhaps you should feel concern for that person, because they’re resorting to violence to cope with their feelings of frustration. We’ve all done it and in my own experience, I don’t think I’ve ever come back to my senses feeling satisfaction that I had lost control. I usually feel some shame for the destruction I caused.
Yeah, if someone can’t help but destroy objects around them or punch holes in walls, I wonder how many bad days or situation escalations they are from targeting a person instead of an object. Rage isn’t a pressure vessel that needs pressure to be released in the form of violence, rather your mind is something you train habits into, meaning you’re training yourself to react to frustration with violence.
Not to mention it never helps anything. You mentioned the feelings of shame, but there’s also more direct consequences of destroying things that happen to be in reach. There was a bash quote from someone who had to print a school paper or something and got so frustrated when they couldn’t access the file that they threw their printer (or something essential to what they needed to do) out of their high storey window in frustration. They were lucky they didn’t accidentally kill someone in the process, and then had a new real problem of not having equipment they needed once they realized the disc or whatever the file was on was sitting on their desk instead of inserted for reading. Or videos of kids getting gamer rage and destroying their keyboards or monitors. That will just make it harder to stop being pissed off because now they need to spend money to get back to where they just were (and were already unhappy about).
Though I do feel differently about object destruction not done in the heat of the moment. Like the printer scene from Office Space or getting enjoyment from demolishing a room before renovating it. It’s a deliberate choice, which doesn’t imply they might fly off the handle and do who knows what.
Now that right there is some Buddahriffic wisdom. As someone who has destroyed a keyboard in frustrated anguish, I can say the satisfaction was dismally ephemeral and every time I found a loose key for months afterward, I felt ashamed of my impulsive and violent behavior.
Although, in the exact moment in which the keyboard exploded into shrapnel, the satisfaction was intense, although I think the novelty of the situation and the personal distraction it caused were the real source of the delight. When I turned back to my sorely inadequate and poorly behaved workstation, the feelings of frustration quickly flooded back, only worse now that I needed to find a new keyboard…and waste time cleaning up the old one.
I don’t think it’s about anthropomorphizing the tool, it’s about expressing appreciation for the tool. Showing appreciation to a wrench may being as simple as making sure that you clean, oil, and properly put it away when your done using it. The tool is not a conscious entity, but the mindset of appreciation will make you more likely to properly care for the object resulting it being useful to you for longer.
People used to talk about slaves in exactly the same way.
Our AI assistants might not be conscious yet, but there’s a good chance they will be someday. Treating them with basic decency from the start just seems like the right thing to do. The way I talk to ChatGPT isn’t all that different from how I talk to people - and I don’t feel the need to switch modes just because I’ve rationalized that something isn’t deserving of respect.
I agree, people make it out like we’re giving human rights to unconscious AI… I’m just saying thanks because I’m polite to anyone and anything easy as that
I’d argue that showing disdain, aggression, and disrespect in communication with AI/LLM things is more likely to be dangerous as one is conditioning themselves to be disdainful, aggressive, and disrespectful when communicating with the same methods used to communicate with other people. Our brains do a great job at association, so, it’s basically just training oneself to be an asshole.
why are you arguing that at me? I just argued that its not a human, AI is a tool and should be treated as such. If my tool sucks, I will tell it so and quit using it. If my tool is great, I will use it to the best of my ability and respect its functionality.
everyone else here is making scarecrow arguments because I just don’t think it needs to be anthropomorphized. The link speaks about “tens of millions of dollars” wasted on computing please and thank you
Rationally and in vacuum, anthropomorphizing tools and animals is kinda silly and sometimes dangerous. But human brains don’t work do well at context separation and rationality. They are very noisy and prone to conceptual cross-talk.
The reason that this is important is that, as useless as LLMs are at nearly everything they are billed as, they are really good at fooling our brains into thinking that they possess consciousness (there’s plenty even on Lemmy that ascribe levels of intelligence to them that are impossible with the technology). Just like knowledge and awareness don’t grant immunity to propaganda, our unconscious processes will do their own thing. Humans are social animals and our brains are adapted to act as such, resulting in behaviors that run the gamut from wonderfully bizzare (keeping pets that don’t “work”) to dangerous (attempting to pet bears or keep chimps as “family”).
Things that are perceived by our brains, consciously or unconsciously, are stored with associations to other similar things. So the danger here that I was trying to highlight is that being abusive to a tool, like an LLM, that can trick our brains into associating it with conscious beings, is that that acceptability of abusive behavior towards other people can be indirectly reinforced.
Basically, like I said before, one can unintentionally train themselves into practicing antisocial behaviors.
You do have a good point though that people believing that ChatGPT is a being that they can confide in, etc is very harmful and, itself, likely to lead to antisocial behaviors.
that is fucking stupid behavior
It is human behavior. Humans are irrational as fuck, even the most rational of us. It’s best to plan accordingly.
I’m a parent, and I set a good example by being incredibly respectful to people, whether it’s the cashier at the grocery store, their teacher at school, or a police officer. I show the same respect because I’m talking to a person.
When I’m talking to a machine, I’m direct without any respect because the goal is to clearly indicate intent. “Alexa play <song>” or “Hey Google, what’s <query>?” They’re tools, and there is zero value in being polite to a machine, it just adds more chances for the machine to misinterpret me.
Kids are capable of understanding that you act differently in different situations. They’re super respectful to their teachers, they don’t bother with that w/ their peers, and us as parents are somewhere in between. I don’t want my kids to associate AI/LLMs more with their teachers than their pencils. They’re tools, and their purpose is to be used efficiently.
I am happy to hear that people say please and thank you. When Siri/Alexa came out, we taught the kids to always say please and thank you when addressing them. If you can be polite to an AI, then you can be polite to a human.
Yes!
its a hammer, do you teach the kids to thank their tools?
I understand teaching the children respect and how to behave, but AI and Siri/Alexa are just tools. They don’t need to be anthropomorphizing ai, IMO that is dangerous on a humanity level scale.
Respecting your tools is a pretty fundamental thing to learn. Whatever that respect looks like for one tool or another.
Absolutely. But respect looks a lot different for each type of tool. For example:
Thanking my hammer isn’t showing respect, putting it away when I’m done and using it only for intended uses does.
For an LLM, showing it respect is keeping queries direct so it doesn’t spend unnecessary resources trying to understand what you want. Thanking it does absolutely nothing.
I agree. That’s why i personnally stopped using queries just to thank it but i don’t know what the absolute best practice is when it comes to LLms.
Agree… and this should extend to resources as well. Not respecting nature has led us to this path. If anthropomorphizing the tools and resources helps then so be it. Humans are dumb as nut and storytelling, storybooks , and anthropomorphizing and such is the most effective way to make em understand.
This absolute loon is asking permission from his tools
You are confusing consent with respect. Respect can be being afraid to put your fingers where they might get cut even after using a machine for 30 years. The moment you lose that fear and start doing whatever you want with the machine is when the troubles start. Respect can also be oiling a tool that needs to be for better longevity instead of leaving them full of rust at the bottom of the toolbox.
but dont anthropomorphize your tools. And it’s odd when someone does.
People don’t usually interact with a hammer by talking to it. They interact by holding it, placing it, hammering with it. Respect for a hammer (or similar tool) would be based around those kinds of actions.
Whereas people do interact with a chatbot by talking to it. So then respect for a chatbot would be built around what is said.
People can show respect for a hammer, a house, a dinner prepared by their spouse, their spouse, a chatbot, etc… but respect for each of those things will look a bit different.
Hey, whatever heuristic works for helping people show and feel respect for their environment and the things in it is good in my book. If you’re capable of respecting others in your space without needing to be polite to your inanimate tools, then good on you. Not everyone is like that and if it helps someone feel peace with their surroundings to imagine everything around them has some kind of soul or feelings worthy of consideration, then I’ll take that, too.
Of course, there are limits to everything and if a tool irreparably breaks, hopefully someone is able to discard it accordingly. Pathological hoarding of useless objects is a thing, too, after all.
I thank my car when it alerts me that I left the lights on or my keys in the ignition. I’m not anthropomorphizing my car, I’m practicing appreciation for the benefits my tools provide.
you thank your car?
whatever floats your boat but I think we both know you are just being contrarian now
I open my door, the warning goes off, and I say “thank you car.” It’s better for me mental well being than saying “oh fuck.”
What do you believe the danger is?
Kondo literally has you thanking items for their service as a way to uncouple and declutter. “Humans will pack bond with anything” is a trope for a reason.
It’s about your humanity, not the machine’s
The purpose for Marie Kondo is to alleviate the guilt for getting rid of a thing you liked at one point. If you thank it, you’re essentially convincing yourself that it has fulfilled its purpose and so there’s no guilt in discarding it.
LLMs don’t fit into that. What purpose could thanking it possibly have other than anthropomorphizing it? If you’re trying to break your attachment to an LLM, sure, thank it for the time you spent with it so you can let it go. But thanking it for providing an answer is just silly.
Anthropomorphic Fallacy
https://psychology.tips/anthropomorphic-fallacy/
No one’s assigning emotive states here dude
Yes. I teach them to respect their tools and the objects they use. So you just treat everything as disposable?
But the interaction is different. I have a simple example, would you be upset if you see some people beat up a chair? Probably not, but if you see people beat up something that moves, talks and behaves like a person or an animal you might get upset. Both are just things, but the interaction is still different. So we should teach our kids to be kind in interactions with live line things so that they behave properly when interacting with people. That’s at least how I see it 🤷♂️
I do. Breaking something just because you’re upset is counter-productive and just creates waste, so it frustrates me.
I also think being polite to an LLM is stupid and wasteful. Just be direct about what you need a response to and move on. Don’t be rude (that’s also counter-productive), just be direct. For example, “What’s the capital of Bulgaria?” instead of, “If you could be so kind, could you look up the capital of Bulgaria for me please? Thank you!” Using a tool efficiently is a way of showing it some level of respect.
Tools are tools. Use and maintain them properly, and then move on to the next task.
I see people beat up their things all the time without getting upset
I don’t really care when someone smashes the door closed of their car
or smashes their keyboard in frustration or tosses a pen that doesn’t work right
Perhaps you should feel concern for that person, because they’re resorting to violence to cope with their feelings of frustration. We’ve all done it and in my own experience, I don’t think I’ve ever come back to my senses feeling satisfaction that I had lost control. I usually feel some shame for the destruction I caused.
Yeah, if someone can’t help but destroy objects around them or punch holes in walls, I wonder how many bad days or situation escalations they are from targeting a person instead of an object. Rage isn’t a pressure vessel that needs pressure to be released in the form of violence, rather your mind is something you train habits into, meaning you’re training yourself to react to frustration with violence.
Not to mention it never helps anything. You mentioned the feelings of shame, but there’s also more direct consequences of destroying things that happen to be in reach. There was a bash quote from someone who had to print a school paper or something and got so frustrated when they couldn’t access the file that they threw their printer (or something essential to what they needed to do) out of their high storey window in frustration. They were lucky they didn’t accidentally kill someone in the process, and then had a new real problem of not having equipment they needed once they realized the disc or whatever the file was on was sitting on their desk instead of inserted for reading. Or videos of kids getting gamer rage and destroying their keyboards or monitors. That will just make it harder to stop being pissed off because now they need to spend money to get back to where they just were (and were already unhappy about).
Though I do feel differently about object destruction not done in the heat of the moment. Like the printer scene from Office Space or getting enjoyment from demolishing a room before renovating it. It’s a deliberate choice, which doesn’t imply they might fly off the handle and do who knows what.
Now that right there is some Buddahriffic wisdom. As someone who has destroyed a keyboard in frustrated anguish, I can say the satisfaction was dismally ephemeral and every time I found a loose key for months afterward, I felt ashamed of my impulsive and violent behavior.
Although, in the exact moment in which the keyboard exploded into shrapnel, the satisfaction was intense, although I think the novelty of the situation and the personal distraction it caused were the real source of the delight. When I turned back to my sorely inadequate and poorly behaved workstation, the feelings of frustration quickly flooded back, only worse now that I needed to find a new keyboard…and waste time cleaning up the old one.
I don’t think it’s about anthropomorphizing the tool, it’s about expressing appreciation for the tool. Showing appreciation to a wrench may being as simple as making sure that you clean, oil, and properly put it away when your done using it. The tool is not a conscious entity, but the mindset of appreciation will make you more likely to properly care for the object resulting it being useful to you for longer.
People used to talk about slaves in exactly the same way.
Our AI assistants might not be conscious yet, but there’s a good chance they will be someday. Treating them with basic decency from the start just seems like the right thing to do. The way I talk to ChatGPT isn’t all that different from how I talk to people - and I don’t feel the need to switch modes just because I’ve rationalized that something isn’t deserving of respect.
I agree, people make it out like we’re giving human rights to unconscious AI… I’m just saying thanks because I’m polite to anyone and anything easy as that
I’d argue that showing disdain, aggression, and disrespect in communication with AI/LLM things is more likely to be dangerous as one is conditioning themselves to be disdainful, aggressive, and disrespectful when communicating with the same methods used to communicate with other people. Our brains do a great job at association, so, it’s basically just training oneself to be an asshole.
why are you arguing that at me? I just argued that its not a human, AI is a tool and should be treated as such. If my tool sucks, I will tell it so and quit using it. If my tool is great, I will use it to the best of my ability and respect its functionality.
everyone else here is making scarecrow arguments because I just don’t think it needs to be anthropomorphized. The link speaks about “tens of millions of dollars” wasted on computing please and thank you
that is fucking stupid behavior
Rationally and in vacuum, anthropomorphizing tools and animals is kinda silly and sometimes dangerous. But human brains don’t work do well at context separation and rationality. They are very noisy and prone to conceptual cross-talk.
The reason that this is important is that, as useless as LLMs are at nearly everything they are billed as, they are really good at fooling our brains into thinking that they possess consciousness (there’s plenty even on Lemmy that ascribe levels of intelligence to them that are impossible with the technology). Just like knowledge and awareness don’t grant immunity to propaganda, our unconscious processes will do their own thing. Humans are social animals and our brains are adapted to act as such, resulting in behaviors that run the gamut from wonderfully bizzare (keeping pets that don’t “work”) to dangerous (attempting to pet bears or keep chimps as “family”).
Things that are perceived by our brains, consciously or unconsciously, are stored with associations to other similar things. So the danger here that I was trying to highlight is that being abusive to a tool, like an LLM, that can trick our brains into associating it with conscious beings, is that that acceptability of abusive behavior towards other people can be indirectly reinforced.
Basically, like I said before, one can unintentionally train themselves into practicing antisocial behaviors.
You do have a good point though that people believing that ChatGPT is a being that they can confide in, etc is very harmful and, itself, likely to lead to antisocial behaviors.
It is human behavior. Humans are irrational as fuck, even the most rational of us. It’s best to plan accordingly.
So thanking your tools: dangerous on a humanity level scale
Telling your tool it sucks: Normal behaviour
Exactly!
I’m a parent, and I set a good example by being incredibly respectful to people, whether it’s the cashier at the grocery store, their teacher at school, or a police officer. I show the same respect because I’m talking to a person.
When I’m talking to a machine, I’m direct without any respect because the goal is to clearly indicate intent. “Alexa play <song>” or “Hey Google, what’s <query>?” They’re tools, and there is zero value in being polite to a machine, it just adds more chances for the machine to misinterpret me.
Kids are capable of understanding that you act differently in different situations. They’re super respectful to their teachers, they don’t bother with that w/ their peers, and us as parents are somewhere in between. I don’t want my kids to associate AI/LLMs more with their teachers than their pencils. They’re tools, and their purpose is to be used efficiently.
Lol.
Lmao even.