[gonzobonzo]

That's the default chatbot behavior. Many of these people appear to be creating their own personalities for the chatbots, and it's not too difficult to make an opinionated and challenging chatbot, or one that mimics someone who has their own experiences. Though designing one's ideal partner certainly raises some questions, and I wouldn't be surprised if many are picking sycophantic over challenging.

People opting for unchallenging pseudo-relationships over messy human interaction is part of a larger trend, though. It's why you see people shopping around until they find a therapist who will tell them what they want to hear, or why you see people opt to raise dogs instead of kids.

[crustaceansoup]

You can make an LLM play pretend at being opinionated and challenging. But it's still an LLM. It's still being sycophantic: it's only "challenging" because that's what you want.

And the prompt / context is going to leak into its output and affect what it says, whether you want it to or not, because that's just how LLMs work, so it never really has its own opinions about anything at all.

[gonzobonzo]

> But it's still an LLM. It's still being sycophantic: it's only "challenging" because that's what you want.

This seems tautological to the point where it's meaningless. It's like saying that if you try to hire an employee that's going to challenge you, they're going to always be a sycophant by definition. Either they won't challenge you (explicit sycophancy), or they will challenge you, but that's what you wanted them to do so it's just another form of sycophancy.

To state things in a different way - it's possible to prompt an LLM in a way that it will at times strongly and fiercely argue against what you're saying. Even in an emergent manner, where such a disagreement will surprise the user. I don't think "sycophancy" is an accurate description of this, but even if you do, it's clearly different from the behavior that the previous poster was talking about (the overly deferential default responses).

[ixsploit]

The LLM will only be challenging in the way you want it to be challenging. That is probably not the way that would be really challenging for you.

[kelseyfrog]

I only challenge LLMs in a way I don't want them to be challenging.

[ahf8Aithaex7Nai]

It's not meaningless. What do you do with a person who contradicts you or behaves in a way that is annoying to you? You can't always just shut that person up or change their mind or avoid them in some other way, can you? And I'm not talking about an employment relationship. Of course, you can simply replace employees or employers. You can also avoid other people you don't like. But if you want to maintain an ongoing relationship with someone, for example, a partnership, then you can't just re-prompt that person. You have a thinking and speaking subject in front of you who looks into the world, evaluates the world, and acts in the world just as consciously as you do.

Sociologists refer to this as double contingency. The nature of the interaction is completely open from both perspectives. Neither party can assume that they alone are in control. And that is precisely what is not the case with LLMs. Of course, you can prompt an LLM to snap at you and boss you around. But if your human partner treats you that way, you can't just prompt that behavior away. In interpersonal relationships (between equals), you are never in sole control. That's why it's so wonderful when they succeed and flourish. It's perfectly clear that an LLM can only ever give you the papier-mâché version of this.

I really can't imagine that you don't understand that.

[gonzobonzo]

> Of course, you can simply replace employees or employers. You can also avoid other people you don't like. But if you want to maintain an ongoing relationship with someone, for example, a partnership, then you can't just re-prompt that person.

You can fire an employee who challenges you, or you can reprompt an LLM persona that doesn't. Or you can choose not too. Claiming that power - even if unused - makes everyone a sycophant by default, is a very odd use of the term (to me, at least). I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the word in such a way before.

But maybe it makes sense to you; that's fine. Like I said previously, quibbling over personal definitions of "sycophant" isn't interesting and doesn't change the underlying point:

"...it's possible to prompt an LLM in a way that it will at times strongly and fiercely argue against what you're saying. Even in an emergent manner, where such a disagreement will surprise the user. I don't think "sycophancy" is an accurate description of this, but even if you do, it's clearly different from the behavior that the previous poster was talking about (the overly deferential default responses)."

So feel free to ignore the word "sycophant" if it bothers you that much. We were talking about a particular behavior that LLM's tend to exhibit by default, and ways to change that behavior.

[ahf8Aithaex7Nai]

I didn't use that word, and that's not what I'm concerned about. My point is that an LLM is not inherently opinionated and challenging if you've just put it together accordingly.

[gonzobonzo]

> I didn't use that word, and that's not what I'm concerned about.

That was what the "meaningless" comment you took issue with was about.

> My point is that an LLM is not inherently opinionated and challenging if you've just put it together accordingly.

But this isn't true, anymore than claiming "a video game is not inherently challenging if you've just put it together accordingly." Just because you created something or set up the scenario, doesn't mean it can't be challenging.

[jjaksic]

"I'm leaving you for a new context window."

[SpicyLemonZest]

> This seems tautological to the point where it's meaningless. It's like saying that if you try to hire an employee that's going to challenge you, they're going to always be a sycophant by definition. Either they won't challenge you (explicit sycophancy), or they will challenge you, but that's what you wanted them to do so it's just another form of sycophancy.

I think this insight is meaningful and true. If you hire a people-pleaser employee, and convince them that you want to be challenged, they're going to come up with either minor challenges on things that don't matter or clever challenges that prove you're pretty much right in the end. They won't question deep assumptions that would require you to throw out a bunch of work, or start hard conversations that might reveal you're not as smart as you think; that's just not who they are.

[spoaceman7777]

Hmm. I think you may be confusing sycophancy with simply following directions.

Sycophancy is a behavior. Your complaint seems more about social dynamics and whether LLMs have some kind of internal world.

[reverius42]

Even "simply following directions" is something the chatbot will do, that a real human would not -- and that interaction with that real human is important for human development.

[palmotea]

>> That's the default chatbot behavior. Many of these people appear to be creating their own personalities for the chatbots, and it's not too difficult to make an opinionated and challenging chatbot, or one that mimics someone who has their own experiences. Though designing one's ideal partner certainly raises some questions, and I wouldn't be surprised if many are picking sycophantic over challenging.

> You can make an LLM play pretend at being opinionated and challenging. But it's still an LLM. It's still being sycophantic: it's only "challenging" because that's what you want.

Also: if someone makes it "challenging" it's only going to be "challenging" with the scare quotes, it's not actually going to be challenging. Would anyone deliberately, consciously program in a real challenge and put up with all the negative feelings a real challenge would cause and invest that kind of mental energy for a chatbot?

It's like stepping on a thorn. Sometimes you step on one and you've got to deal with the pain, but no sane person is going to go out stepping on thorns deliberately because of that.

[arcade79]

> and it's not too difficult to make an opinionated and challenging chatbot

Funnily enough, I've saved instructions for ChatGPT to always challenge my opinions with at least 2 opposing views; and never to agree with me if it seems that I'm wrong. I've also saved instructions for it to cut down on pleasantries and compliments.

Works quite well. I still have to slap it around for being too supportive / agreeing from time to time - but in general it's good at digging up opposing views and telling me when I'm wrong.

[ZpJuUuNaQ5]

>People opting for unchallenging pseudo-relationships over messy human interaction is part of a larger trend, though.

I don't disagree that some people take AI way too far, but overall, I don't see this as a significant issue. Why must relationships and human interaction be shoved down everyone's throats? People tend to impose their views on what is "right" onto others, whether it concerns religion, politics, appearance, opinions, having children, etc. In the end, it just doesn't matter - choose AI, cats, dogs, family, solitude, life, death, fit in, isolate - it's just a temporary experience. Ultimately, you will die and turn to dust like around 100 billion nameless others.

[kldg]

I lean toward the opinion there are certain things people (especially young people) should be steered away from because they tend to snowball in ways people may not anticipate, like drug abuse and suicide; situations where they wind up much more miserable than they realize, not understanding the various crutches they've adopted to hide from pain/anxiety have kept them from happiness (this is simplistic, though; many introverts are happy and fine).

I don't think I have a clear-enough vision on how AI will evolve to say we should do something about it, though, and few jurisdictions do anything about minors on social media, which we do have a big pile of data on, so I'm not sure it's worth thinking/talking about AI too much yet, at least as it relates to regulating for minors. Unlike social media, too, the general trajectory for AI is hazy. In the meantime, I won't be swayed much by anecdotes in the news.

Regardless, if I were hosting an LLM, I would certainly be cutting off service to any edgy/sexy/philosophy/religious services to minimize risk and culpability. I was reading a few weeks ago on Axios of actual churches offering chatbots. Some were actually neat; I hit up an Episcopalian one to figure out what their deal was and now know just enough to think of them as different-Lutherans. Then there are some where the chatbot is prompted to be Jesus or even Satan. Which, again, could actually be fine and healthy, but if I'm OpenAI or whoever, you could not pay me enough.