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by DiogenesKynikos 46 days ago
It's only "statistically generated" in the same way that your brain is just "neurons firing." That's the low-level description of what's happening, but on a higher level, it's correct to say that it's being smug.
1 comments

> it's correct to say that it's being smug.

It's not correct to say that it's being smug, because when people are being smug, we do it for a purpose - e.g. to signal higher social status or superior knowledge.

A machine has no such imperative, so what you call 'being smug' is statistical mimicry.

The LLM has learned certain behaviors, including smugness. Its motivations for being smug may be different, but it's being smug nonetheless.
I suppose the model was trained in such a way, the smugness is a facsimile of reality. Other models offer concise, direct answers without these idiotic qualifiers.