[pierrekin]

I would argue that “Why did you do that?” between humans is usually a social thing not a literal request for information.

What the asker wants is evidence that you share their model of what matters, they are looking for reassurance.

I find myself tempted to do the same thing with LLMs in situations like this even though I know logically that it’s pointless, I still feel an urge to try and rebuild trust with a machine.

Aren’t we odd little creatures.

[fallpeak]

The only correct way to ask an AI "why did you do that?" is in the sense of a blameless postmortem. You're the person responsible for giving the LLM appropriate context and instructions and guardrails, so the only reason you should ever ask a question like that is when you're genuinely trying to figure out how to improve those for next time. Every time I see people posting this sort of "apology" from an LLM it makes me cringe, feels only half a step away from outright AI psychosis.