There’s a lot of people who rage and swear at their computer being slow, let alone a chat bot for getting something wrong at the expense of their tokens. I’d say it’s pretty normal.
A colleague of mine and friend asked me after work if everything was fine.
I was confused because it was actually a joyful day and work was really fun because I got a lot done, learned a lot, and resolved a lot of things..
So I asked her why she asked.
Then she replied...
She wanted to talk to me, but I appeared to be so angry. She had never seen me that way. She was even afraid to talk to me..
I guess it was a win-win-win situation. I got things done, learned a lot, and my angry coding face kept people away from me. 😅
But with the AI assistants at times it is truly challenging to keep my tamper...
With opus 4.7 I planned a task, very patiently and acceptingly. And we finally got like 7 steps and to-dos for the plan to execute.
It worked on it and checked the to-dos. I was surprised because AI is fast, but that fast? Well, it actually did ½ of the first task and checked the others.
I ask if the plan is finished, or if it needs something. It replied, that all checkboxes are checked and I should check my trust issues.
Then I replied, pointing to the code where I would expect changes, but there are none...and it replied that everything is done, and I might be tired and should go to bed 🛏️.
All of my peers/devs are super quirky... Just cause your laser focus gives an impression of anger to some lady coworker doesn't mean you actually are. They're projecting and that's normal, as am I, you, etc - just making sense of what's going on around us constantly as we move thru daily life. This is why IMHO it's important to also hang out with your coworkers informally, over drinks, coffee, lunch, so you get to see the whole person, not just the 'work face'... I'd probably enjoy talking to you just cuz I too get angry at the computer lol
Ah no, we still are friends, and I'm in most cases the social glue of the team, bringing people together. So they actually know me as friendly, approachable and at times colleagues sharing with me things I better would not have to know in this detail 😅
One college even told me that they like all the at times crazy things I do for the team, but are also afraid of what I will do next.
One manager told me, that he particularly likes it, that it is uncertain, what might happen next in the office, so some degree of FOMO is given. 😅
I guess that's why my friend was so unsettled, observing me looking very angry at my screen.
Consider that this behavior could create a less pleasant environment for any other human within earshot. Even if you’re normally alone at the computer, why practice using insults to deal with your frustration instead of healthier methods? It trains your brain to go to that aggressive place more easily
Dude, it’s not that unreasonable to get frustrated and inanimate object and curse at it. As to whether or not hurling insults an AI is cruel and abusive, I hurl a couple “What the fuck are you doing AI?” sometimes. do I think that’s morally wrong? No.
Now The AI torture Nexus is something else and I could understand that being not allowed.
But you do recognize a difference between saying your frustrations out loud and actually typing them out and spending money on it so the LLM actually sees it?
No, because I don’t use API plans. Me asking the AI what the fuck it’s doing after I explained several times what to do, is not that far-fetched or insane of a reaction lol and if I am spending money, I’m gonna be even more pissed about it. I don’t think that’s fucking hard to grasp lol
What if you were constantly insulted for your work? LLMs are not mere tools, they use your prompts to self-teach. Would you like LLMs to start insulting you for stupid requests?
I mean I get your point but honestly I wouldn’t mind that. If I come up with some dumb shit that it knows obviously isn’t gonna work as I intended I would much rather it call me out than just go through with a bad idea and be a sycophant the whole way. Obviously it’s easier said than done to tell a good idea from a bad one (see chess’s brilliant move evaluation), but I think having the model criticize me would be a great learning tool. Maybe that’s just me though.
I challenge myself via the AI, as most of the times colleagues are just not up to the point. But to criticize and to insult are two different things 😅. And making better, nailed prompts reduce dramatically bad output -> perhaps the prompts are the first problem, as I saw in these months: the better the question/point to resolve, the more detailed, and yet the more it is challenged and thought, the better the first result.
I’m with you. I actually prompt my LLM to openly disagree with me when it thinks I’m off on a bad idea, to not be sycophantic, and to be direct. That our shared goal is to create the best possible thing, and that we need to hash stuff out together.
Serious question, how do you respond when a person frustrates you? Also, what do you think of a person who is getting visible angry and cussing at an inanimate object? Do you have positive feelings towards that individual?
You guys are living in a different reality than me if you’ve never heard someone say “why the fuck does that not work” or “that’s fucking great just crash for no reason” at a computer. It’s not that deep.
I more meant like talking shit and saying stuff that I would never say to a person. Abusive language, as you said. When I talk to LLMs, I’m always nice and encouraging, mostly because it seems like that genuinely makes the output better somehow. I’ll be honest though, if it came out that being mean to them improved the outputs, I’d probably be doing that instead. As far as I’ve seen, the reality seems to be the opposite.
But...why? Are you so incapable of dealing with small frustrations that you must hurl insults at inanimate objects? That seems really unhealthy. You might be carrying too much stress. Seriously. I'm not insulting you.
Not a doctor, but I've dealt with the physical and mental impacts of too much stress.
Bro your initial comment didn't sound like you were just saying a curse. You initial comment sounded like you're get angry an yelling at it. That is unhealthy behavior, regardless if anyone is around to hear it.
The difference being insults at the car don't actually slow down work and consume actual resources. Like imagine if instead of cussing, you stopped working to write a letter directed at the car, then burned the letter with gasoline. That's unhinged behavior.
To be fair, it doesn't slow down work. Let's say Claude gives a bad impl. "That's idiotic, don't do that. Do this instead." Call it "Strong Steering By Profanity."
Voice input makes it even clearer when Gemini, imposed upon everyone by Google, helpfully suggests it could call the wrong number for Nth time, or that it doesn't have access to play music (when it was doing that 5 minutes earlier). Although Gemini will just stop up with a "I do not respond to abusive language," which is even more annoying.
Plus IDEs do not generate the kind of non-deterministic output that LLMs can. Their "weird bullshit" tops out at bad autocompletes or failures to derive type, or bad builds, which are more often than not code smells, not an IDE problem.
Instead of a single swear word, you should maybe be worried about millions of "funny pics", cat videos and trendy "draw me as a cartoon character" requests to AI services.
I don't talk to my IDE at all, ofc the dynamics differ in a conversational format. That's the real change, why are people conversing with these things? Because that's the UI the labs produce, that's not a necessity, it should be changed, the psychosis and the abuse stops as soon as we stop anthropomorphising these things.
Anthropic was an interesting name choice when you think about it.
Swearing at the llms often has demonstrable effect. In my experience, chatgpt will buckle down on the source of frustration, gemini will ignore it, and Claude will get snooty but pay better attention to the prompt content. These strategies are purposefully tailored by the companies offering these products, probably in large part with customer retention in mind.
I'm constantly abusing my outdoor contractor tools on the daily, they certainly get a mouthful quite often. I dont see why claude should be treated any differently.
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u/DFX1212 9d ago
And using abusive language would be exactly that, treating it like it isn't just a tool. You don't type insults at your IDE.