Oliver Haslam Contributing Writer Oliver Haslam has written about technology of all shapes and sizes for over 15 years, both online and in print. He's fascinated by how personal computing continues to change as tower PCs give way to foldable phones and beyond.
Neilbob What complete nonsense. It's almost like our government doesn't know its own people at all. Not only will we say thankyou to everything, we will also tell it we are sorry at every possible opportunity, whether it's our mistake or not. I do the same (in real life that is, not for some phony-baloney computerised tomfoolery). Reply
bit_user I only use polite words or phrases as part of a prompt I'm going to type, anyway. I never enter a prompt that serves no purpose other than to express gratitude. Most often, I will use these as a turn of phrase, such as "Thank you for explaining X, but I'm really more interested in Y." Remember that what you get out of a chat bot has a lot to do with what you put in. Their responses are very context-dependent, and if you want a more detailed, thoughtful, and accurate response, then use of proper grammar, punctuation, and the appropriate jargon can help. The article said: It is, of course, true that you don't need to thank a chatbot for its help, but some may choose to ignore that advice. Especially given constant claims by AI companies that their tech "could kill all humans" sooner or later. I guess this was a silly, throw-away remark. However, it's worth understanding how LLMs retain context, as that also gets to the underlying rationale for why thanking them is pointless. Once you've concluded a session, the context is discarded and the instance forgets everything about the interaction. The only possible exception to that is if part of your interaction is incorporated into training data for future models, although I'm not sure exactly if or how they do that. Even if it is, it's literally a drop in the ocean of all their training data and won't make any difference. Certainly not enough to justify the additional prompt processing. Reply
COLGeek Being polite to our future AI overlords may not be such a bad idea. /s Okay, I'll show myself to the door now. Reply
Arkitekt78 The fact this even has to be said is ridiculous. Environmental impact aside, thanking or otherwise being polite to a machine is nonsensical. That being said…. of course this would come from UK. 🤣 Reply
Kindaian No need to waste tokens with extra context: https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman Reply
greenfire33 Teach the world to be even more rude than it already is, good idea! Reply
bit_user greenfire33 said: Teach the world to be even more rude than it already is, good idea! I did have this same thought. It's the sort of thing that makes sense in the short-term and for pragmatic reasons. However, it could cast a long shadow, at a cultural level. Reply
bigdragon I predict that in a year or two there will be a flood of articles decrying the lack of pleasantries in communication. They'll all ask if interacting with AI was the motivation behind people becoming more rude without actually blaming AI. It'll be like the post-pandemic "everyone forgot how to socialize" crisis all over again! Reply
Katorga greenfire33 said: Teach the world to be even more rude than it already is, good idea! Or teach it to distinguish between humans and AI. Losing sight of the fact that you're interacting with the latter and that it has no feelings could be dangerous. Reply
me-three Kindaian said: No need to waste tokens with extra context: https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman Thanks. Bookmarked. Token cost doesn't figure into local AI use, but semantic compression will help with both prompt processing & token gen speeds. OTOH loss of pragmatics makes it worthwhile only for technical or coding use, not general use. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/uk-government-tells-staff-to-stop-thanking-ai-chatbots-draft-guidance-pushes-lightweight-models-and-shorter-prompts-to-cut-environmental-impact#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/membership
- OpenAI and Anthropic are reportedly investigating tens of thousands of AI security incidents; OpenAI pauses testing after AI 'kill switch' fails to stop a rogue
- Virginia Tech lab 3D prints a liquid metal composite to guide heat, boost thermal conductivity 40x
- Walmart price drop slashes $461 off Gigabyte's RTX 5080-powered gaming laptop with 32GB of memory
- Novel attack slashes computing power needed to crack textbook RSA cryptography
- How Open Science Can Help Researchers Prepare for the Next Pandemic
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.