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0 pointsHansenq14d ago0 comments

Often times I'll say something like:

"Can we make the change to change the button color from red to blue?"

Literally, this is a yes or no question. But the AI will interpret this as me _wanting_ to complete that task and will go ahead and do it for me. And they'll be correct--I _do_ want the task completed! But that's not what I communicated when I literally wrote down my thoughts into a written sentence.

I wonder what the second order effects are of AIs not taking us literally is. Maybe this link??

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john01dav14d ago

Such miscommunication (varying levels of taking it literally) is also common with autistic and allistic people speaking with each other

jyoung860714d ago

I don't find that an unreasonable interpretation. Absent that paragraph of explained thought process, I could very well read it the agent's way. That's not a defect in the agent, that's linguistic ambiguity.

piiritaja14d ago

I mean humans communicate the same way. We don't interpret the words literally and neither does the LLM. We think about what one is trying to communicate to the other.

For example If you ask someone "can you tell me what time it is?", the literal answer is either "yes"/"no". If you ask an LLM that question it will tell you the time, because it understands that the user wants to know the time.

HansenqOP14d ago

very fair! wild to think about though. It's both more human but also less.

I would say this behavior now no longer passes the Turing test for me--if I asked a human a question about code I wouldn't expect them to return the code changes; i would expect the yes/no answer.

Tesl14d ago

It's funny because I interpret it the opposite way you do. If someone asked me that question, I'd absolutely assume they want it changed and do it.

Aeolun14d ago

If you work with codex a lot you’ll find it is good at taking you literally, and that that is almost never what you want.

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