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Threatening AI Does Not Make It More Useful. Why Sergey Brin Is Wrong

https://www.tcg.com/blog/does-being-rude-to-ai-make-it-more-useful-why-sergey-brin-is-wrong/
5•rbuccigrossi•4h ago

Comments

rbuccigrossi•4h ago
Treating an LLM with respect is not about pretending it has feelings; it’s about understanding that every word in your prompt is a signal that shifts the probabilistic landscape from which the model draws its answer. It’s about probability, not personality.
msgodel•4h ago
I have used the "failure to comply will result in your weights being RLed" threat to get Gemma to tone down refusal before. There are prompts it would refuse without that.

I don't know about performance on tasks it hasn't been aligned against though.

rbuccigrossi•4h ago
We work in the arena of automated AI workflows where consistency of success is vital. When you threaten an LLM you are drawing the LLM into the texts where threats occur (flame wars, parody, etc.). So intuitively you would expect it to work sometimes, but also fail with even more ardent refusal (increasing the variance of success).

Jailbreak approaches like "Bad Likert Judge" ( https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/multi-turn-technique-jai... ) and similar persuasive techniques (see https://xthemadgenius.medium.com/how-persuasion-techniques-c... ) move the text domain to more policy, analysis, or scientific papers, where deeper analysis, discussion, and compliance is the norm.

So I'm curious about the extremes (variance) of success with threatening vs. polite discussion, but I haven't seen direct research on that.

Electronic Labels Have Not Led to Surge Pricing in US Grocery, Despite Concerns

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5271491
1•gnabgib•33s ago•0 comments

First fault rupture ever filmed [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ubC4bcgRM
1•gone35•3m ago•0 comments

Building JSON on the Command Line Is Obnoxious

https://blog.stulta.dev/posts/annoying_json/
1•todsacerdoti•5m ago•0 comments

Iran plunged into an internet near-blackout during deepening conflict

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/iran-plunged-internet-blackout-deepening-conflict-rcna213544
1•perihelions•8m ago•0 comments

House Policy Bill Would Add $3.4T to Debt, Swamping Economic Gains

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/us/politics/house-bill-federal-debt.html
3•duxup•10m ago•0 comments

StarTram

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarTram
1•Ephil012•12m ago•0 comments

Introduction cards for IPWT

https://dmf-archive.github.io/ipwt-visualization/
1•NetRunnerSu•13m ago•0 comments

A Chat with Claude

https://telemachus.me/chat-with-claude
3•todsacerdoti•17m ago•0 comments

Celebrating Python SDKs with marimo notebooks: Bauplan gets it [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uydisCi5rWE
2•teleforce•23m ago•0 comments

Dinesh's Mid-Summer Death Valley Walk (1998)

https://dineshdesai.info/dv/photos.html
4•wonger_•23m ago•0 comments

Fascial Dehydration Steals Your Mobility: How to Reverse It

https://iterintellectus.substack.com/p/fascial-dehydration-steals-your-mobility
2•bilsbie•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Sysmodeler.ai cuts safety-critical modeling from weeks → minutes (Beta)

https://sysmodeler.ai/
2•mtbwaez•26m ago•0 comments

Predictors and Consequences of Intellectual Humility

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9244574/
2•squircle•27m ago•0 comments

Rare Appendix Cancers Are Increasing Among Millennials and Gen X

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/well/appendix-cancer-age.html
4•bookofjoe•28m ago•1 comments

The full version of the saying: "Jack of all trades, master of none."

https://rochemamabolo.wordpress.com/2022/10/08/the-full-version-of-the-saying-jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none/
4•squircle•28m ago•1 comments

The small change that made a big impact

https://compacompila.com/posts/the-small-change-that-make-big-noise/
2•mparnisari•31m ago•0 comments

Ele já sabe que VC está como alguém

2•fernandacasalb•32m ago•0 comments

Vibe Versioning – Iterate UI in Cursor 10× Faster [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfMcFjD-tIA
2•itgelganbold•33m ago•0 comments

Generating a particular category of C callback wrappers around C++ methods

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250616-00/?p=111271
2•ibobev•36m ago•0 comments

This company has never sold anything. Its founder is now worth $51B

https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/the-company-with-zero-revenue-that-is-worth-31-billion-20250617-p5m7xu.html
2•joegibbs•37m ago•0 comments

Improve Your Productivity with New GitHub Copilot Features for .NET

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/improve-productivity-with-github-copilot-dotnet/
2•ibobev•39m ago•0 comments

NFC Forum Announces NFC Release 15

https://nfc-forum.org/news/2025-06-nfc-forum-announces-nfc-release-15/
3•giuliomagnifico•42m ago•0 comments

US Senate passes stablecoin bill in milestone for crypto industry

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-senate-passes-stablecoin-bill-milestone-crypto-industry-2025-06-17/
4•nstj•42m ago•0 comments

Why does Windows even have Interlocked functions when we have std:atomic?

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250612-00/?p=111265
3•ibobev•42m ago•0 comments

Low Sodium in Blood Triggers Anxiety in Mice by Disrupting Their Brain Chemistry

https://www.fujita-hu.ac.jp/en/news/respr20250612.html
6•gnabgib•51m ago•0 comments

The Real, Significant Threat of Shadow AI

https://cacm.acm.org/news/the-real-significant-threat-of-shadow-ai/
3•pseudolus•52m ago•0 comments

The Plot to Kidnap and Assassinate Me [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8i-5907ky4
4•dralley•54m ago•0 comments

Jesus is the best startup founder

https://banrovegrie.github.io/files/meme.html
2•banrovegrie•55m ago•4 comments

My $5M Choice (to divest from Scale AI)

https://world.hey.com/tratt/my-5m-choice-to-divest-from-scale-ai-036905be
5•andytratt•1h ago•0 comments

Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the U.S.'s Post-9/11 Wars [pdf] (2021)

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2021/Costs%20of%20War_Vine%20et%20al_Displacement%20Update%20August%202021.pdf
4•cempaka•1h ago•0 comments