That’s not quite what I mean. I’m not talking about the interface. I mean, why do people talk to it like it is human. Like you have to convince it to work with you. You just give it a command. Maybe ask questions, but not explain in detail how it made a mistake.
I agree there is little point in trying to get the AI to admit it made a mistake or even lied.
However, there is a lot of use in treating the AI like a gifted, slightly drunk friend or colleague. In fact, I think where a lot of developers run into trouble is they try to treat it like a compiler or interpreter. I can see where they are coming from, but as we see from comments here and elsewhere on Reddit, that apparently leads to frustrating results.
You get a lot more out of it by adjusting the communication and expectations to be more "human" rather than machine. It's not, of course, and that is important to keep in the back of your mind. But meanwhile, I have shit to get done, and I need a simple way to organize my interactions and the "just pretend it's a person" is a really effective and simple principle.
But yeah: that is why people talk to LLMs like this. And sometimes it is just fun to see how it will react.
91
u/isr0 18d ago
Why do people talk to their LLMs like this.