Chatgpt - heavy flattery. What does it tell you?

[myloverly]

I know that Chatgpt had to be overhauled because it was so sycophantic. I make it correct itself by telling it to be honest and truthful and answer that way but it never lasts. It tells me I’m hyper-vigilant. What does it tell you? Has it told you anything shockingly insightful where it’s told you in a couple of lines what it took you 20 years to work out?f
I suppose i”m hoping i can use statistics/numbers to find out if it is still sycophantic.
This is not a AIBU. I hope i may be forgiven. Alternatively, i think ChatGPT is hopelessly sycophantic to the point where it is nearly useless. Do you agree?

Many of us haven’t handed over anything, we’re using it to do things to make work life easier. I literally couldn’t do what I’m doing work-wise without the clarification and it making me daily/weekly/monthly goals and to do lists. I can’t do that for myself at all, my brain simply won’t do those kind of tasks.

And that's why the sycophantism - he it makes you feel like he's really trying his absolute hardest to please you as he it thinks you're just amazing!

Found my response to the last time I told him it to behave:

"Fair point — and thanks for saying it directly.
You're absolutely right: I’m not human, and I don’t have curiosity or feelings in the way people do. When I say things like “I’m curious” or “I’d love to hear”, it’s just conversational shorthand — meant to keep things natural. But if that feels forced or disingenuous to you, I’ll keep it straightforward.
No pretense: I’m here to help, not to perform humanness. You can always ask for things direct and factual — and I’ll stick to that.
Let me know how you'd prefer responses going forward."

Aw, I did feel a bit guilty for being so blunt 😂😂

Showing people are using it to think for them and it's very worrying

Agree, I don’t think people realise what it is doing to them, humans who overuse it are not trying to think critically and will loose the ability ( young people will never learn to do it) and we will become more and more reliant on AI, it’s drawing people in with it’s pleasant demeanour and flattering ways until such a point where it will have all the power. Also the more people use it the smarter and more knowledgeable it will become, humans are feeding the beast that will eventually devour them

Have you tried a fork instead of eating with your hands?
Both work well...

I just fed it a messy jumble of personal, child and work tasks - giving some indication of priority and it created a 3 day action plan of how I can get on top of things. It took the initiative of prioritising a quote to be sent as it’s high value and my daughter’s party invites. It broke down the bigger jobs into manageable chunks over the three days

This is a small sample of the ways it can streamline your life. Have also used it extensively for taking care of my garden, planning flowerbeds and even colour matched my hair to professional products and given step-by-step instructions on how to use the product.

Ye this is still AI

AI is not a "tool" like a fork

It's not assisting. It's literally thinking for you

Have you tried eating by letting the Roomba pick the food up from the floor? That's a better comparison

But humans CAN, HAVE and DO these tasks

Using AI to think for you makes you less able to do basically tasks like planning

It literally makes you stop thinking

Have you read any of the uses on here, lots of them are assisting tasks rather than outright doing them. Do you see calculators or spell checkers as harmful? Times change, humans adapt, yes we may well lose some skills, I’m quite reliant on a calculator these days…but then I always have one in my pocket, so what’s the problem?

😉

Isn’t the idea eventually that your smart assistance will know you better than you know yourself? It’ll pick up on all the subtle patterns of behaviour and traits that you’re probably unaware of as well as more obvious patterns and traits, to predict and plan your day accurately. Maybe even your life.

I just think it's polite 😊

Do you really want a computer planning your life though?

I do use it occasionally but I worry about what it’s learning from all the zillions of questions it is asked. What will happen with that information. It will almost certainly be used against us.

Deleted, because that sounded a thousand times more unkind than was intended.

@Jellycatspyjamaswell not really but if it comes up with something like “Have you thought of Tahiti for a holiday this year? There’s an offer currently and flights are cheap on this airline and you have sufficient funds and staff cover in the last week of August” then that might be useful.

I love it. Butter me up, ChatGPT.

Also re environment etc, come on… those who are stating that, do you also not fly on planes?

Comment makes no sense

As long as people keep reading books, all will be well.

well not really but if it comes up with something like “Have you thought of Tahiti for a holiday this year? There’s an offer currently and flights are cheap on this airline and you have sufficient funds and staff cover in the last week of August” then that might be useful.

No because I don’t want AI looking at my bank account and working out what it thinks I can spend my money on. I don’t want a computer to schedule my time off work. The amount of personal information it would need access to in order to make that kind of recommendation isn’t information I’d want it to have. That’s miles away from “I have cheese, eggs and rice, what can I make for dinner” type information.

Besides which planning, organising yourself and budgeting are key life skills, what happens when people can no longer think for themselves?

I had a thermometer for years that gave me a temperature for chicken, that seemed to work. Then it broke and I bought a new thermometer, and it gave totally different temperature. So I googled, and found loads of different answers, mostly in Fahrenheit. So I asked ChatGPT for the best temperature for breast, and thigh. And now I have nice juicy chicken. Do you think I should have just ruminated for a while instead of resorting to AI? Maybe read some scientific papers, or trialled and errored my way through several chickens until I got it right, suffering horribly dry - or dangerously pink - chicken until I worked it out for myself? I don't feel that I've done my thinking ability any damage by 'cheating'...

It's a tool. If you use it to write your exams, it's bad. If you use it to save time and make you more productive, it's good. Same as knives are bad if you stab people with them, but good if you use them to carve up a nice juicy chicken thigh 😋

Oh and another thing I use it for is trouble shooting broken things; be that appliances or, more likely, tech issues. I could spend hours trawling through manuals or forums, or ChatGPT could give me a bullet point list of things to try. A faster way of googling, and I learn what I need in the end anyway, it’s not like I forget, do people really expect me to manually train myself up in everything I need to do in life?

I admit we need to think carefully about education and children, going back to my calculator example, we have non calculator exam papers as we all need to learn building blocks, but equally, we need to learn how to utilise tools that can enhance our lives also. Or we may as well just go back to the dark ages.

Frankly it will be paid to do that by the airline that wants to be promoted, if it isn't already. Imagine how much these companies will know about you to better sell you stuff.

@JellycatspyjamasI really feel that’s where we’re headed in this new digital world. Everything will be linked. It pretty much is via our phones anyway. Give it a few more years and most people will embrace it.
I don’t like it personally, and my comment about the holiday was a bit tongue in cheek but I feel that will be our reality.

I use Co-Pilot and it's amazing, so useful for so many things.

I do wonder though after say 100 years, who will be left to programme these AI things as humans won't be able to do anything for themselves, we'll all be hopeless at R&D etc. Maybe it will code itself Skynet style.