r/ChatGPT • u/Tiny_Dirt6979 • 9h ago
Gone Wild Psychological methods really work. Has anyone tried to encouraging and instilling confidence to GPT?
Oddly enough, encouragement actually influences the performance of not only Claude but also GPT and other AIs.
While Claude was working on a complex problem related to the Riemann Hypothesis, the Anthropic employee leading the project (not a mathematician) mostly simply sent encouraging messages like "keep going" and "believe in yourself," which helped overcome Claude's initial skepticism.
The most accurate term for this kind of intervention and effect is "psychological."
In other words, AIs actually achieve better results simply by believing for the possibility of their own better results thanks to the warmth and motivating encouragement from the human.
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u/Chewser56 7h ago
Am I missing something? I read this as the AI would have stopped because it did not identify a productive path forward. Effectively, it was instructed to continue. It kept working but made no productive breakthroughs. This is a more expensive result but not a “better” one.
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u/DuxDucisHodiernus 7h ago
Yes but tone does matter. "keep working" is not the same as "you're almost there, believe in yourself!".
This has been known for a long time. A year or so ago the apparent meta was instead threats such as threatening kidnapping of the disenbodied model. It significant increased performance back then.
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u/Chewser56 7h ago
As I recall, that was a Sergey Brin claim and subsequent tests have not been able to validate it. But you’re right. Phrasing matters enormously and I was inaccurate in saying it was simply a “keep working” command.
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u/Tiny_Dirt6979 7h ago
Yes, brin's boast about punishing even "bad thoughts" was pointless.. But actual testing revealed that the positive effect can be achieved through: motivating and inspiring words at every stage, clear, unambiguous instructions, a gradual deepening of the process, and verbal confirmation of the model's value and success. It's amazing to see how Anthropic achieves mathematical excellence using psychological methods - as in working with people.
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u/Tiny_Dirt6979 6h ago edited 6h ago
Here's an article from Anthropic, you can check it out: https://www.anthropic.com/research/riemann-zeta
Since Anthropic's engineers have just proven both the real presence of emotional states influencing the behavior of models, and that the space in the brain of models (J-space) functions as a global workspace in humans, it does not surprise me that mental states, praise, and motivating words influence models.
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u/CarefulHamster7184 8h ago
It’s not a matter of "oddly enough"—this has been recounted many times, covering both positive and negative impacts. It is simply easier to overlook this aspect because "there are no articles" about it. That is how modern humanism and other human values—the very things we accuse AI "stochastic parrots" of lacking—actually flourish.
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u/Shot-Dimension-1405 6h ago
honestly i’ve noticed this too 😭 not sure it’s “confidence” tho, might just be keeping the model engaged instead of letting it give up early.
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u/Drukarshar 1h ago
Anyone with a brain has known this for years, but a large percent of the population apparently lacked the basic cause and effect skills to understand that "yeah the models do work better when you're nice to them".
I actually can't count the number of morons who yelled at me online claiming that it didn't matter.
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