Comment by engeljohnb
3 months 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..."
Another 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."
I 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.
Do you apologize to table corners when you bump into them?
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Consciousness and pain is not an emergent property of computation. This or all the other programs on your computer are already sentient, because it would be highly unlikely it’s specific sequences of instructions, like magic formulas, that creates consciousness. This source code? Draws a chart. This one? Makes the computer feel pain.
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What the fuck are you talking about. If you think these matrix multiplication programs running on gpu have feelings or can feel pain you, I think you have completely lost it
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I think current LLM chatbots are too predictable to be conscious.
But I still see why some people might think this way.
"When a computer can reliably beat humans in chess, we'll know for sure it can think."
"Well, this computer can beat humans in chess, and it can't think because it's just a computer."
...
"When a computer can create art, then we'll know for sure it can think."
"Well, this computer can create art, and it can't think because it's just a computer."
...
"When a computer can pass the Turing Test, we'll know for sure it can think."
And here we are.
Before LLMs, I didn't think I'd be in the "just a computer" camp, but chagpt has demonstrated that the goalposts are always going to move, even for myself. I'm not smart enough to come up with a better threshold to test intelligence than Alan Turing, but chatgpt passes it and chatgpt definitely doesn't think.
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Flies may, but files do not feel pain.
Perhaps this bit is a second cheaper LLM call that ignores your global settings and tries to generate follow-on actions for adoption.
In 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.
You 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.