How well do you treat AI? Are you kind to it?

[msmith537]

@ParallelLines

Our household has a few Alexa enabled devices, with the highest possible “don’t share my information” that is allowed, which is of course, still more than ideal.

In general, I’m pretty curt (not rude, but curt) with it. I’ll ask information, or activation, or to enable play, and that’s about it. I occasionally complain out loud when it makes egregious errors “That isn’t what I asked…” but that’s more me talking out loud to myself than talking back to Alexa (other threads on that habit though!).

My wife treats Alexa with routine politeness, most commonly with a “thank you” to Alexa after it answers a question, but not generally a “Please” when making a request. My wife is the nice person in the household, but isn’t treating Alexa as a “person”, just a habit of politeness and fondness for even inanimate objects of value and utility.

LOL…My wife gets made at me when I silence an Alexa device by telling it “Alexa, shut up!”

[Reply]

@Jophiel

We’ll just have to agree on a strong difference of opinion there.

That’s fine (if you no longer wish to discuss this more). If you did someday, though, I’d still be interested in hearing your thoughts on it.

[DigitalC]

I have a hard time playing evil in videogames, of course I’m nice to AI.

[wolfpup]

@Reply

I’m not sure if the average person is equipped to determine when a LLM (or other AI) has actually crossed into the realm of “sentience”, though, ill-defined as that is. They long ago passed the Turing test, and we don’t really have a better way to measure their ability to feel or care.

I don’t think any serious thinking person would claim that present-day AI possesses anything like “sentience”, even if they’re not versed in some of the mechanisms of AI. But there are two factors that I think figure into the benefits of being kind or polite to an AI, and both have to do with the level of sophisticated behaviour that they’ve achieved.

The first factor is that AIs act sentient even when they’re not, so being persistently rude to them may shape a pattern of behaviours that carries over into other interactions where it really does matter. Or IOW, for those inclined to act like assholes, it reinforces that behaviour.

The other factor, again related to the very high sophistication of the latest LLMs, is that the nature of a person’s behaviour may affect the way the LLM interacts with them. The effect may be subtle, or it may be as simple as the fact that statements focused on rudeness and insults tend to carry less information than more reasoned ones, hence less constructive dialog ensues.