7 ms·

Claude has a sycophancy problem too. I actually ended up canceling my subscription because I got sick of being "absolutely right" about everything.

by Me1000 10mo ago

p1necone 10mo ago
I've had fun putting "always say X instead of 'You're absolutely right'" in my llm instructions file, it seems to listen most of the time. For a while I made it 'You're absolutely goddamn right' which was slightly more palatable for some reason.
- ethin 10mo ago
  I've found that it still can't really ground me when I've played with it. Like, if I tell it to be honest (or even brutally honest) it goes wayyyyyyyyy too far in the other direction and isn't even remotely objective.
  - p1necone 10mo ago
    Yeah I tried that once following some advice I saw on another hn thread and the results were hilarious, but not at all useful. It aggressively nitpicked every detail of everything I told it to do, and never made any progress. And it worded all of these nitpicks like a combination of the guy from the ackchyually meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ackchyually-actually-guy https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ackchyually-actually-guy) and a badly written Sherlock Holmes.
    - im3w1l 10mo ago
      My advice would be: It can't agree with you if you don't tell it what you think. So don't. Be careful about leading questions (clever hans effect) though. So better than "I'm thinking of solving x by doing y" is "What do you think about solving x by doing y" but better still is "how can x be solved?" and only mention "y" if it's spinning its wheels.
- Applejinx 10mo ago
  Have it say 'you're absolutely fucked'! That would be very effective as a little reminder to be startled, stop, and think about what's being suggested.
ACCount37 10mo ago
Compared to GPT-5 on today's defaults? Claude is good. No, it isn't "good", it's grating as fuck. But OpenAI's obnoxious personality tuning is so much worse. Makes Anthropic look good.

Claude has a sycophancy problem too. I actually ended up canceling my subscription because I got sick of being "absolutely right" about everything.

by Me1000 10mo ago

Claude has a sycophancy problem too. I actually ended up canceling my subscription because I got sick of being "absolutely right" about everything.

p1necone 10mo ago

I've had fun putting "always say X instead of 'You're absolutely right'" in my llm instructions file, it seems to listen most of the time. For a while I made it 'You're absolutely goddamn right' which was slightly more palatable for some reason.

ethin 10mo ago
I've found that it still can't really ground me when I've played with it. Like, if I tell it to be honest (or even brutally honest) it goes wayyyyyyyyy too far in the other direction and isn't even remotely objective.
- p1necone 10mo ago
  Yeah I tried that once following some advice I saw on another hn thread and the results were hilarious, but not at all useful. It aggressively nitpicked every detail of everything I told it to do, and never made any progress. And it worded all of these nitpicks like a combination of the guy from the ackchyually meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ackchyually-actually-guy https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ackchyually-actually-guy) and a badly written Sherlock Holmes.
  - im3w1l 10mo ago
    My advice would be: It can't agree with you if you don't tell it what you think. So don't. Be careful about leading questions (clever hans effect) though. So better than "I'm thinking of solving x by doing y" is "What do you think about solving x by doing y" but better still is "how can x be solved?" and only mention "y" if it's spinning its wheels.
Applejinx 10mo ago
Have it say 'you're absolutely fucked'! That would be very effective as a little reminder to be startled, stop, and think about what's being suggested.

ACCount37 10mo ago

Compared to GPT-5 on today's defaults? Claude is good. No, it isn't "good", it's grating as fuck. But OpenAI's obnoxious personality tuning is so much worse. Makes Anthropic look good.