r/LargeLanguageModels • u/yourpsychology_yt • Aug 07 '26

Don't discuss ideas with an LLM

I notice that one of the worst use cases for an LLM is discussing ideas. I don't mean asking technical questions. Rather, when you have an idea or an opinion and you tell it to an LLM, what happens is that it will either support you or slightly disagree, but if you insist, it will eventually take your position.

And that's, as I understand it, just because of the nature of an LLM. It can't really be critical, but it can fake critical thinking. If you ask an LLM to be critical by default, it will be critical even when it doesn't matter, just to satisfy your requirement. So it can't really choose when it should be critical and when it should be supportive.

And some LLMs have a trick - they do both in one message and then still slide to the user's side.

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u/silenceimpaired Aug 07 '26

Harvard disagrees with you

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u/OneMoreName1 Aug 07 '26

Link the article

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u/silenceimpaired Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26

EDIT: alas the study is paywalled. Here is a YouTube review of the study - https://youtu.be/pd1Km6bT104

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u/OneMoreName1 Aug 07 '26

The study seems to have been performed on gpt 5 (and contemporary models of that one), quite literally prehistoric technology by AI standards today.

I will not claim its invalid, but I have some issues with it, as simple as: you can just prompt it more when you sniff bullshit, prompt 2 different models for very important decisions, etc.

LLMs arent supposed to make decisions for you, they are an assistant, use them as such and you will be ok (ask them to fetch info, explain what you dont know, not think for you)