AI chatbots are becoming experts at changing people's minds
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AI chatbots are becoming experts at changing people's minds
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
yathern · · focus · HN ↗
When disagreeing with a human, it's very easy to view it as a competition. One is right, one is wrong - the one who is wrong is the loser. To change your mind is to be submissive to the other. I exaggerate, but I think we all feel this way at some point or another. It's why political arguments at Thanksgiving get heated. It's the fact that there's people who think something different, and think YOU'RE wrong - and vice versa! With a model, there's no person to get upset with, or to feel competitive with - to muscle for rank - or to temper your affection for while wanting to correct them.
The AI is only interacting because you asked, and clearly has no emotional stake in winning the argument. To change your mind in this context isn't to lose a contest. This makes it much more palatable to read rebuttals to your ideas - not to mention the tone and style seek to avoid offense to the reader as much as possible.
Buttons840 · · focus · HN ↗
You're right. There are many many times when even then humblest hint that you are right will have negative interpersonal implications, which does make it hard to change minds.
I've also seen several times where I make a suggestion, humbly accept its rejection, and then, lo, a week later the other person has the same idea I suggested.
iammrpayments · · focus · HN ↗
roarcher · · focus · HN ↗
I'm used to machines malfunctioning, but having one willfully disobey me, and even with a touch of disrespect, is just...what a time to be alive.
bryanlarsen · · focus · HN ↗
hannasanarion · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe it's just me.
For like, 90% of conversations, I don't want it to let technical inaccuracies and rhetorical flourishes slide. I want it to tell me that the point I'm making is technically wrong because an expert would recognize subtle misuse of terminology, or because there's an exception or edge case that I didn't proactively insert as a caveat, so that it is my decision to ignore that advice and be a little wrong on purpose to suit my writing goals.
What I don't want is for the AI to assume my writing goals, and be incorrect because it believes that is what I want. I want it to "well ackshually" me so I can say "shut up, nerd".
Like, there's another comment in this thread that I ran by claude to check my understanding about today's post-training methods and how they avoid sycophancy, and claude responded by splitting a bunch hairs over like, "well, technically this is still RLHF, its just that there's other feedback signals mixed in, and the preference is detected in other ways, and ai judges are involved as a filter for examples, this and that and blah blah blah". Shut up, Nerd. In the context of this conversation, RLHF is already being used as synecdoche for user preference feedback, readers understand that, and even if they don't, their misunderstanding is completely harmless. I will not be taking all the wind out of the sails of the point I'm trying to make inserting your three paragraphs of irrelevant clarification in the name of technical correctness, thank you very much.
As long as receiving nitpicks and technical minutiae implies 1. there are no larger structural problems and 2. the model isn't rolling over to please me with sycophancy, I figure this is ideal.
roarcher · · focus · HN ↗
And in this case, I was not wrong. The "recommended" solution was Opus 5's typical overengineering for a use case that would never be needed.
worldthruword · · focus · HN ↗
smallmancontrov · · focus · HN ↗
No it's not about humans being irrationally competitive. Human limitations on conversation length, bandwidth, research speed, etc are severe, creating a prisoner's dilemma around open-mindedness that usually makes it an unstable strategy. At any point, your conversation partner can choose to abuse the fact that confident lies take 1x effort to tell and 10x-100x effort to debunk -- unless you are both in a context that actually discourages this behavior, which is rare. Closed-mindedness is a Nash Equilibrium.
Instead, LLMs can be more persuasive due to economics. An LLM doesn't have to worry that it is wasting its resources trying to logic someone out of a position that they didn't logic themselves into, or worse, dumping the effort into a conversation with a bad-faith actor intent on exploiting the misinformation asymmetry. The resource allocation question was answered before it was even invoked, by the person paying to run it. The LLM is not playing a game where it will be punished for good-faith argumentation, so it can afford to do more of it.
yathern · · focus · HN ↗
I suppose that's a fair point as well. Though, if I'm arguing with a human - and they pull up ChatGPT to make their points and do their arguing for them, I would consider that bad-faith. Even if it might be the same exact dialog as if I pulled out my phone and discussed it with AI, without of the human middle-manning. Maybe I'm just particularly sensitive, but for me, there's something about my argument being with a real human that makes it much more emotionally charged, and prompts my mind to close. I'm aware of this and try to resist, but it's I think very natural
rbanffy · · focus · HN ↗
It helps to think both are wrong and are just trying to figure out what right looks like, or what other information exists that was not considered when forming one’s opinions.
bwfan123 · · focus · HN ↗
The problem with AI is that it cant match human stupidity. It need some training on artificial stupidity to match its human counterparts. Humans on the other hand sit on a wide spectrum on the stupidity scale. Those of us binging on AI will become cognitively obese while those on an AI diet can flex their cognitive muscles.