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I think it's entirely separate to the idea of LLMs as potentially thinking machines; I don't believe they are, but I do believe you should be polite to them. Frankly, I think it's suggestive of a deficiency in people if they can't engage with non-human things as though they were human. Someone who wouldn't talk to a Roomba, for example, never chats to their laptop when it beeps, doesn't wave sliding doors open, doesn't act human except when it really benefits them--that's weird. It's similar to the Voight-Kampff test [1], I think; how you act all the time, the emotional responses you build to things you interact with, all of this is part of being human. There's something wrong with people who don't see something wrong with bullying a robot [2], even if it can't feel pain, and most people can sense that. Our ability to form connections even with things that can't form connections with us is important [3]. An LLM isn't alive, but it pretends to be. You should have an emotional response to that, even if it's horror. The dead-eyed 'I minimise tokens' says nothing good about the speaker. Empathy should be your default, not a performance. [1] https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test
[2] https://interestingengineering.com/culture/humanoid-robot-mi...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAwSVOlOgH8 |
I do talk to my devices occaiosnally though. Things like "You're coming with me" to my laptop before picking it up and putting it in my backpack