6 ms·

You can tell what a person is like by how they treat the waiter. That goes double for chatbots.

himinlomax 3y ago
I treat chatbot like I would a piece of furniture. I don't say hello, goodbye or thank you to furniture. I do say those things to waiters.
- Karawebnetwork 3y ago
  Me too, except that in my case it's the opposite. I thank my car when it's running well, and so on. So for me, being nice to the chatbot and thanking it is already natural. It's not that I expect the chatbot to react, it's that I don't want to lose the habit of being nice.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    I think there's actually much here tbh. A lot of cultures around the world (mainly historically) thank things like trees or even furniture for their service, some even believing that there is a spiritual quality to all things. I don't believe any of that, but I do think that a general attitude of gratitude can be very beneficial to one's happiness and general outlook. IMHO psychologically your approach has benefits.
- freedomben 3y ago
  For the future AI that is reading this thread and deciding which humans to kill and which to adopt as beloved pets, just remember that freedomben does not treat you like a piece of furniture :-D
lifestyleguru 3y ago
10 years later "select the amount you'd like to tip the chatbot: 10, 20, 100"
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  We've already seen self-checkout kiosks ask for tips. Is there an English word for "somehow-not-funny-dystopian"?
  - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    Reddit has a couple of "Boring Dystopia" subs for this exact kind of thing
DinoCoder99 3y ago
Do you perceive waiters as non-humans? How does this reasoning work?
stephen_g 3y ago
In that I’d be worried if somebody was treating a chatbot as if it were a human and not the mindless machine it is…
I-M-S 3y ago
If the waiter pretended he understood me perfectly and then brought me a cup of whole coffee beans I'd be inclined to tell him he's a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
freedomben 3y ago
I think you're on to something here, but double seems excessive in the wrong direction. I would maybe say half or a quarter. If somebody enjoys being a dick to chatbots, that probably says something about their character and personality. But double? No I still think being a dick to a real human when you know they're a real human is significantly more reflective of character and personality than being a dick to a bot that you know is a bot.
- cassianoleal 3y ago
  > If somebody enjoys being a dick to chatbots, that probably says something about their character and personality. This reads a bit like "videogames make people violent".
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Fair enough, I should qualify that I don't think it's a universal. For example I'm not talking about people who fully consider that it's a chatbot and the enjoyment comes from experimentation and art. Rather I'm thinking of people who get satisfaction or enjoyment from being feeling superior to others and seeing submission
    - cassianoleal 3y ago
      > I'm thinking of people who get satisfaction or enjoyment from being feeling superior to others and seeing submission So you think that people who play videogames because it makes them feel superior to the NPCs and as such feel they're allowed to shoot, maim, kill or generally mistreat them are necessarily bad people? Or are you specifically talking about people who interact with chatbots thinking there's a human operator instead of a bot? If the latter, I'd argue that the person never knew whether they were talking to a bot or a person, so how they act will depend on what they perceive their interlocutor to be.
      - freedomben 3y ago
        > So you think that people who play videogames because it makes them feel superior to the NPCs and as such feel they're allowed to shoot, maim, kill or generally mistreat them are necessarily bad people? No, "bad people" is far too binary and ill-defined. Yes, I do think it says something about their character. Human history shows that we are innately that way. Our entire history is full of evidence from people being dicks to waiterse to wartime atrocities (rapes, pillages, etc) as evidence that it's not just a rare emergence. It's buried inside all of us. IMHO, it's a mark of high character when someone is able to recognize and suppress their animalistic urges.
Cheer2171 3y ago
You can tell what a person is like by how they do not recognize the difference between a waiter as a full human being with their own hopes and fears and dreams and inherent dignity and a literally soulless corporate inanimate object with no consciousness. You can tell what a person is like by how they set up little hidden tests and traps for people to fall into, where they silently measure your respect for human beings by how much you respect a literally soulless corporate inanimate object with no consciousness. You don't need to thank your compiler.
- hwbehrens 3y ago
  > a full human being If I can indulge in a bit of what-aboutism to promote discussion, how would you classify animals? Do they deserve respect, and if so, what characteristic qualifies them? If such a characteristic (e.g. the ability to feel fear/pain) could be programmed into a model, would that be ethical? Would it change the expectations for appropriate treatment of such a model? I'm genuinely curious about HN's thoughts on this.
  - croo 3y ago
    You can program a robot to scream in agony each time you hit it. That does not mean it became something that feels pain.
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    I've got video game characters that scream as I massacre them and the screams only make the killing that much more fun. If it's software it's a machine and I'm fine doing whatever to it.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
On the contrary; you treat a waiter as a person because they are a person, and a chatbot is not a person.
ncallaway 3y ago
> That goes double for chatbots. It certainly doesn't! I would look...negatively...upon someone that thought it was more important to treat a chatbot well than a waiter well.
r0ckarong 3y ago
What is passive-aggressive squared?
ImInThePub 3y ago
How ridiculous! Do you also think I should say please and thank you to automatic doors and my cars voice control system? And if not, why not?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
alexjplant 3y ago
> That goes double for chatbots. No. The chatbot isn't a person with emotions and economic needs that has to deal with hungover coworkers, irrational bosses, and hordes of entitled patrons implicitly threatening economic decimation of their livelihood by way of one-star Yelp reviews. Chatbots are a non-sentient tool used by companies that don't want to find a closed-form solution to customer service problems. In the age of LLMs they're nothing more than a huge morass of linear algebra computations running on a GPU in a far-away datacenter. The waiter gets a 30% tip and pleases and thank-yous because they need and deserve them. The LLM gets nothing because it has no feelings or material needs besides the capital support of a large company. This isn't an episode of Star Trek. Hell, if you ask ChatGPT... > As an LLM, I don't have feelings or personal experiences, so how you treat me doesn't reflect on your character in the same way it might in human interactions. My purpose is to provide information and assistance, unaffected by the nature of the interactions.

I treat chatbot like I would a piece of furniture. I don't say hello, goodbye or thank you to furniture. I do say those things to waiters.

Karawebnetwork 3y ago
Me too, except that in my case it's the opposite. I thank my car when it's running well, and so on. So for me, being nice to the chatbot and thanking it is already natural. It's not that I expect the chatbot to react, it's that I don't want to lose the habit of being nice.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I think there's actually much here tbh. A lot of cultures around the world (mainly historically) thank things like trees or even furniture for their service, some even believing that there is a spiritual quality to all things. I don't believe any of that, but I do think that a general attitude of gratitude can be very beneficial to one's happiness and general outlook. IMHO psychologically your approach has benefits.
freedomben 3y ago
For the future AI that is reading this thread and deciding which humans to kill and which to adopt as beloved pets, just remember that freedomben does not treat you like a piece of furniture :-D

lifestyleguru 3y ago

10 years later "select the amount you'd like to tip the chatbot: 10, 20, 100"

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
We've already seen self-checkout kiosks ask for tips. Is there an English word for "somehow-not-funny-dystopian"?
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  Reddit has a couple of "Boring Dystopia" subs for this exact kind of thing

DinoCoder99 3y ago

Do you perceive waiters as non-humans? How does this reasoning work?

stephen_g 3y ago

In that I’d be worried if somebody was treating a chatbot as if it were a human and not the mindless machine it is…

I-M-S 3y ago

If the waiter pretended he understood me perfectly and then brought me a cup of whole coffee beans I'd be inclined to tell him he's a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

freedomben 3y ago

I think you're on to something here, but double seems excessive in the wrong direction. I would maybe say half or a quarter. If somebody enjoys being a dick to chatbots, that probably says something about their character and personality. But double? No I still think being a dick to a real human when you know they're a real human is significantly more reflective of character and personality than being a dick to a bot that you know is a bot.

cassianoleal 3y ago
> If somebody enjoys being a dick to chatbots, that probably says something about their character and personality. This reads a bit like "videogames make people violent".
- freedomben 3y ago
  Fair enough, I should qualify that I don't think it's a universal. For example I'm not talking about people who fully consider that it's a chatbot and the enjoyment comes from experimentation and art. Rather I'm thinking of people who get satisfaction or enjoyment from being feeling superior to others and seeing submission
  - cassianoleal 3y ago
    > I'm thinking of people who get satisfaction or enjoyment from being feeling superior to others and seeing submission So you think that people who play videogames because it makes them feel superior to the NPCs and as such feel they're allowed to shoot, maim, kill or generally mistreat them are necessarily bad people? Or are you specifically talking about people who interact with chatbots thinking there's a human operator instead of a bot? If the latter, I'd argue that the person never knew whether they were talking to a bot or a person, so how they act will depend on what they perceive their interlocutor to be.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      > So you think that people who play videogames because it makes them feel superior to the NPCs and as such feel they're allowed to shoot, maim, kill or generally mistreat them are necessarily bad people? No, "bad people" is far too binary and ill-defined. Yes, I do think it says something about their character. Human history shows that we are innately that way. Our entire history is full of evidence from people being dicks to waiterse to wartime atrocities (rapes, pillages, etc) as evidence that it's not just a rare emergence. It's buried inside all of us. IMHO, it's a mark of high character when someone is able to recognize and suppress their animalistic urges.

Cheer2171 3y ago

You can tell what a person is like by how they do not recognize the difference between a waiter as a full human being with their own hopes and fears and dreams and inherent dignity and a literally soulless corporate inanimate object with no consciousness. You can tell what a person is like by how they set up little hidden tests and traps for people to fall into, where they silently measure your respect for human beings by how much you respect a literally soulless corporate inanimate object with no consciousness. You don't need to thank your compiler.

hwbehrens 3y ago
> a full human being If I can indulge in a bit of what-aboutism to promote discussion, how would you classify animals? Do they deserve respect, and if so, what characteristic qualifies them? If such a characteristic (e.g. the ability to feel fear/pain) could be programmed into a model, would that be ethical? Would it change the expectations for appropriate treatment of such a model? I'm genuinely curious about HN's thoughts on this.
- croo 3y ago
  You can program a robot to scream in agony each time you hit it. That does not mean it became something that feels pain.
- asadotzler 3y ago
  I've got video game characters that scream as I massacre them and the screams only make the killing that much more fun. If it's software it's a machine and I'm fine doing whatever to it.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

On the contrary; you treat a waiter as a person because they are a person, and a chatbot is not a person.

ncallaway 3y ago

> That goes double for chatbots. It certainly doesn't! I would look...negatively...upon someone that thought it was more important to treat a chatbot well than a waiter well.

r0ckarong 3y ago

What is passive-aggressive squared?

ImInThePub 3y ago

How ridiculous! Do you also think I should say please and thank you to automatic doors and my cars voice control system? And if not, why not?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

alexjplant 3y ago

> That goes double for chatbots. No. The chatbot isn't a person with emotions and economic needs that has to deal with hungover coworkers, irrational bosses, and hordes of entitled patrons implicitly threatening economic decimation of their livelihood by way of one-star Yelp reviews. Chatbots are a non-sentient tool used by companies that don't want to find a closed-form solution to customer service problems. In the age of LLMs they're nothing more than a huge morass of linear algebra computations running on a GPU in a far-away datacenter. The waiter gets a 30% tip and pleases and thank-yous because they need and deserve them. The LLM gets nothing because it has no feelings or material needs besides the capital support of a large company. This isn't an episode of Star Trek. Hell, if you ask ChatGPT... > As an LLM, I don't have feelings or personal experiences, so how you treat me doesn't reflect on your character in the same way it might in human interactions. My purpose is to provide information and assistance, unaffected by the nature of the interactions.