> It’s an extension of the current Product Management trend to give software quirky and friendly personality.

Ah, Genuine People Personalities from the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

> It’s in their desktop app that has “Good Morning” and other prominent greetings. Claude Code has quirky status output like “Bamboozling” and “Noodling”.

This reminded me of a critique of UNIX that, unlike DOS, ls doesn't output anything when there are no files. DOS's dir command literally tells you there are no files, and this was considered, in this critique, to be more polite and friendly and less confusing than UNIX. Of course, there's the adage "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all", and if you consider "no files found" to not be nice (because it is negative and says "no"), then ls is actually being polite(r) by not printing anything.

Many people interact with computers in a conversational manner and have anthropomorphized them for decades. This is probably influenced by computers being big, foreign, scary things to many people, so making them have a softer, more handholding "personality" makes them more accessible and acceptable. This may be less important these days as computers are more ubiquitous and accessible, but the trend lives on.

I worked in an org with offices in America, India, Europe, and Israel, and it was not uncommon for the American employees to be put off by the directness of the foreign employees. It was often interpreted as rudeness, to the surprise of the speaker. This happened to the Israel employees more than the India or Europe employees, at least in part because the India/Europe employees usually tried to adapt to the behavior expected by the Americans, while the Israel employees largely took pride in their bluntness.

It most definitely is a American thing - this is why non-native speakers often come out as rude or unfriendly or plain stupid.

We don't appreciate how much there is to language.

> For what it’s worth, the Americans I know don’t find it as cute or lovable as intended. It feels fake and like an attempt to play at emotions.

Yes they need to "try a completely different approach"

Most tech companies and the dominant pop cultures are all American, etc.

People are finding the trend to use "unalive" instead of "die" or "kill" to skirt YouTube censoring non-sensical too.

Good, because you shouldn't trust it in the first place.

These systems are still wrong so often that a large amount of distrust is necessary to use them sensibly.

I lie and present my ideas as coming from colleagues.

> Not every question is an excellent question. Not every statement is a brilliant observation.

A brilliant observation, Dr. Watson! Indeed, the merit of an inquiry or an assertion lies not in its mere utterance but in the precision of its intent and the clarity of its reasoning!

One may pose dozens of questions and utter scores of statements, yet until each is finely honed by observation and tempered by logic, they must remain but idle chatter. It is only through genuine quality of thought that a question may be elevated to excellence, or a remark to brilliance.

Heh - yeah have had trillion dollar ideas many times :)

People really over-exaggerate the claim of friendly and polite US service workers and people in general. Obviously you can find the full spectrum of character types across the US. I've lived 2/3 of my life in Britain and 1/3 in the US and I honestly don't think there's much difference in interactions day to day. If anything I mostly just find Britain to be overly pessimistic and gloomy now.

Prejudice, based on my anecdotal experience. I live in the US but have spent a decent amount of time in Europe (mostly Germany).

It's common for foreigners to come to America and feel that everyone is extremely polite. Especially eastern bloc countries which tend to be very blunt and direct. I for one think that the politeness in America is one of the cultures better qualities.

Does it translate into people wanting sycophantic chat bots? Maybe, but I don't know a single American that actually likes when llms act that way.

> ... do you have any sources to back up your conjecture, or is this just prejudice?

Let me guess, you consider yourself a progressive left democrat.

Do I have any source for that? No, but I noticed a pattern where progressive left democrats ask for a source to discredit something that is clearly a personal observation or opinion, and by its nature doesn't require any sources.

The only correct answer is: it's an opinion, accept it or refute it yourself, you don't need external validation to participate in an argument. Or maybe you need ;)

Claude is very "American", just try asking it to use English English spelling instead of American English spelling; it lasts about 3~6 sentences before it goes back. Also there is only American English in the UI (like the spell checker, et al), in Spanish you get a choice of dialects, but not English.

Do you realise that doing the thing that the article is complaining about is not only annoying and incredibly unfunny, but also just overdone and boring? Have one original thought in your life.

You're absolutely right! I agree with everything you said but didn't want to put in effort to right a funny, witty follow up!

>most people around the world would be perfectly okay with short and to-the-point answers

Wow, this is really interesting. I had no idea Japan, for example, had such a focus on blunt, direct communication. Can you share your clearly extensive research in this area so I can read up on this?

I think we, as Americans who are technical, are more appreciative of short and critical answers. I'm talking about people who have soul-searching conversations with LLMs, of which there are many.

These are the guys who made Golden Gate Claude. I'm surprised they haven't just abliterated the praise away.

You’re absolutely wrong! This is not how reasoning models work. Chain-of-thought did not produce reasoning models.

Finns need to mentally evolve beyond this mindset.

Somebody being polite and friendly to you does not mean that the person is inferior to you and that you should therefore despise them.

Likewise somebody being rude and domineering to you does not mean that they are superior to you and should be obeyed and respected.

Politeness is a tool and a lubricant, and Finns probably loose out on a lot of international business and opportunities because of this mentality that you're demonstrating. Look at the Japanese for inspiration, who were an economic miracle, while sharing many positive values with the Finns.

I want a Marvin chatbot.

That looks perfect.