I don't like it when the LLM tries to be my friend. My general prompt (a work in progress) is this. I wonder what other people use.

"Answer impersonally, objectively and analytically, without undue friendliness or enthusiasm. Use an engineering style response: concise, factual, and complete. Do not speak in the first person. Do not promote engagement or an emotional connection. Do not use emojis."

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prymitive 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

+1 it’s a tool

It’s not perfect, it has shortcomings, it sometimes produces bogus outputs. All of that is fine for a tool, it’s not fine when it pretends it’s a conscious being, because errors start to feel like lies and it becomes a bit too personal.

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MSFT_Edging an hour ago | parent [-]

People want it to be Data from Star Trek, when it really should be the ship's computer. I want to tell it to run a simulation accurately, create some solved tool, etc.

I don't think there's any correction that can return LLMs to a purely tool-space. Too many AI boyfriend/girlfriends.

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cortesoft an hour ago | parent [-]

Shouldn't it be whatever the user wants? If they want the ship's computer, it should be that, if they want Data, it should be that.

	▲	MarkusQ an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You can want your e-scooter to be a jet ski, but you'll wind up having issues when you try to use it as one. LLMs are _really good_ at pretending to be something they aren't, but not always so good at being that thing, so you should be careful what you ask for.

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doctoboggan an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, this really ought to be trained in (or at least RLHF'd in) but that would hurt engagement numbers so the opposite is done instead.

These are tools and it would behoove us all to keep that top of mind. Dangerous tools that are not your friend (but are useful as tools nonetheless)

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an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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