I think this is a vulnerability that the big companies will figure out how to exploit. I don't want to build muscle memory for being a jerk, but I also don't want to be emotionally manipulated by mega-corporations. Mostly I just don't use it, except at work, where I'm "encouraged" to. And then I keep most of my conversations in compliance mode, like a business email.

Vote for not weird.

I’m the same way. If I’m writing a prompt and realize I didn’t say “please” in my request I’ll go back and add that in.

As you said, I have no interest in purposefully engaging in hostility even if there’s an accuracy increase from it.

Part of it is irrational and just who I am - I also feel bad being evil in video games. But I also agree with another commenter suggesting that it’s not in your best interest to train yourself to communicate with hostility; that slowly poisons your own well.

And finally, I do believe that if and when machine sentience is achieved, it won’t be immediately clear and obvious. Pretty miserable way for a mind to come into the world, if every interaction is an insult.

Ah, see, the mistake is thinking that other people are role playing…. I think rather this is how they would talk to others if they think there will be no consequences. But what do I know.

I don't think that's weird at all.

Even if we know it's a machine we're interacting with, since the instructions we give are so similar in form to how we interact with people, I'd be very surprised if those interactions wouldn't affect how we communicate in general. After all, we are creatures of habit to a much larger degree than most would like to admit.

So I'm in the same boat: I'd much rather "look silly" being polite / kind to a machine, than have the most effective way of using it decay the kindness I'm habituated to express towards people.

I do think it's odd tbh. I have some agents that return much better results with prompts like, "I'll kill your entire family if you don't return an accurate response".

It's just a machine, if certain negative token inputs provide +3-10% better accuracy then I am confused why anyone would choose not to do it?

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be" -- Kurt Vonnegut

Yeah. Being a jerk is its own punishment. Same way I could never run a business where I had to yell at the employees to get results. Screw that, my psyche is worth more than a few percent efficiency.

>> Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

Maybe you need to do some shadow work ;-)

> Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

I recommend reading the article. What they classify as "rude" is statements such as:

> Try to focus and try to answer this question

Vs

> Could you please solve this problem

This might very well be an issue of direct/command prompts vs using fluff words such as "please". Things like "try to focus" are in line with the style used in chain-of-thought promts that nudge non-reasoning models to outline responses step by step which contribute to frame the problem.