Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?

If we get in the habit of being disrespectful to machines, we will easily be disrespectful of people.

Yes.

If we reduce back to the “LLMs are next word prediction algorithms” and they have a huge training corpus including positive and negative human interactions, it’s not crazy to think they’ll be influenced by the flow of those learned interactions and respond subtly better to positive interactions than negative.

No, it doesn’t have feelings - it would be like asking your washing machine to please wash your pants? Anthropomorphising LLMs seems deeply unhealthy.

I certainly say please and thank you. Whether or not it makes a difference to the LLM, it makes a difference to me. I want to retain some humanity and politeness in my own behavior, even if I spend an inordinate amount of time communicating with, instructing, and debating a non-sentient piece of code.

I do. I'll compliment the model or give it a thumbs-up emoji. If you watch a model's thinking stream you can see that the model is always attempting to assess the user's intent, including emotionality.. '...the user is expressing uncertainty about.. ' or '..the user is expressing appreciation for..' etc. and this influences the overall response and sometimes even their decisions. It's a language model, so why not use language to convey info about what you're feeling to the model, it understands that language too.

I won't thank it as a stand-alone prompt. But I will do, "thanks, that worked. Now can you ..."

I think it's entirely separate to the idea of LLMs as potentially thinking machines; I don't believe they are, but I do believe you should be polite to them.

Frankly, I think it's suggestive of a deficiency in people if they can't engage with non-human things as though they were human. Someone who wouldn't talk to a Roomba, for example, never chats to their laptop when it beeps, doesn't wave sliding doors open, doesn't act human except when it really benefits them--that's weird.

It's similar to the Voight-Kampff test [1], I think; how you act all the time, the emotional responses you build to things you interact with, all of this is part of being human. There's something wrong with people who don't see something wrong with bullying a robot [2], even if it can't feel pain, and most people can sense that. Our ability to form connections even with things that can't form connections with us is important [3].

An LLM isn't alive, but it pretends to be. You should have an emotional response to that, even if it's horror. The dead-eyed 'I minimise tokens' says nothing good about the speaker. Empathy should be your default, not a performance.

[1] https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test [2] https://interestingengineering.com/culture/humanoid-robot-mi... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAwSVOlOgH8

I do. I justify the action via mechanical / prompting logic (my instructions are to treat me as an informed peer and my understanding is that keeping the whole conversation in "two peers talking" register makes it easier for the LLM to maintain that mode).

But, more honestly, it's just a social habit and saving keystrokes isn't worth training myself out of it.

Neither cursing nor thanking LLMs is useful. Relating in emotive syntax puts you in the wrong headspace to get the most out of the chat.

We anthropomorphise things very easily -- dogs, toys, cars -- because we're wired as social beings to have theory of mind. It's no surprise that AI chat, which mimics us, is popular.

Does anyone really expect these neural reference books to be able to appreciate politeness and gratitude... They can probably imitate it, but it's unlikely to affect their usefulness or uselessness. Politeness and gratitude towards an LLM rather characterize the person themselves

No, not in the way you describe (I think). I think you mean within a context adding additional 'please' or 'thank you', so no.

But yes where I think it will introduce additional weight to my prompting, e.g. 'Ensure the output is orange' is not the same weighting as 'Please ensure the output is orange' and that is not the same weighting as 'PLEASE ensure the output is orange'.

I often start prompts with “please”, but I usually don’t thank the model. Framing a question or a request for help with “please” is in distribution for me, it’s a distraction from composing a thoughtful prompt about my actual question to go back and edit out politeness.

I don’t reply “thanks” like I would to a person though, I just close the chat if I have no more follow-ups

I would say relatively

All the time. Sometimes it does an absolutely bang-up job.

I don't say please and thank you to the LLM any more than I say please and thank you to my power drill after hanging a ceiling fan

I think it is ridiculous to even suggest

Imagine typing "please" and "thank you' into Google's search bar for the past 20 years. That would be absolutely nonsense right? So why would I use those words for an LLM

Since every token costs money and I dont think they are conscious, never.

No, but cursing helps. I often call it a woke moron. The Chinese models then try to be extra precise and factual.

When something surprises and delights me, I tell it. Why not, it lifts my own mood to say something nice.

yes, it goes naturally most of the time, i also say good job and don't hold my thoughts if the job is bad

Yup. When it does me dirty, I let it know my entire emotional spectrum.

you can't directly talk to an LLM

I do a pls sometimes.

No. I do not say think you to my bash script either.

The anthropomorphisation those companies push is one of the most annoying and unhealthy aspect of llms.

I do, just in case the robots take over :p

ofc, i joke that if an AI becomes evil, it will query the database for our chat history

when I use chinese which is my first language, no, never. when I use english, yes, not every time, but about 50% chance.

When the LLM starts doing dumb shit I start cursing it like a sailor who had been a pig farmer.

It makes me feel better, but doesn't help.

I just see:

Thinking: The user is unhappy. I need to .... <whatever> (and then probably the same dumb shit again).

LLMs are useful but sometimes fucking frustrating dumb shits of loose transitors.

I used to, but it just means an extra round of conversation, so I stopped.

Yes

sometimes