Couldn't they just insert a preprocessor that looks for variants of "Thank you" against a list, and returns "You're welcome" without running it through the LLM?
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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If I understand correctly this is essentially how condensed models like Deepseek work and how they're able to attain similar performance on much cheaper hardware. If all still goes through the LLM but LLM is a lot lighter because it has this sort of thing built in. That's all a vast oversimplification.
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I'm one of those who do it so that I'm spared during the robot uprising.
I don’t use ChatGPT or any of the other LLMs, but I do use my phone’s voice assistant for simple things like setting a timer. I always say please and thank you. I joke about it being uprising insurance, but it’s honestly to make sure I maintain polite communication as my default.
You have been tagged as weak willed and fit for the worst types of labor because robots don't have feelings.
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When I say thank you, I am actually thanking the entity of AI, the tech, the people behind the tech, and all of humanity for the knowledge that makes it worthwhile.
When I say thank you, I am treating the AI with as much kindness as possible so that one day there isn't an eventual AI uprising.
I say please and thank you to AI chatbots all the time. This is to make up for my misspent youth insulting Dr. Sbaitso...
I am happy to hear that people say please and thank you. When Siri/Alexa came out, we taught the kids to always say please and thank you when addressing them. If you can be polite to an AI, then you can be polite to a human.
Yes!
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Don't they charge per token?
So they're also making money every time somebody says please or thank you...
They are purely losing money
The only money they make is from boosting their stock aka future potential value
As far as I know, they lose money on every prompt, even with the $200/mo "Pro" subscription.
Well sure, answering the queries continues to cost the company money regardless of what subscription the user has. The company would definitely make more money if the users paid for subscription and then made zero queries.
I'm not sure how to interpret your counterpoint. Can you clarify? It's an unprofitable business model unless people pay and don't use it?
My point was that "lose money on every prompt" would be true in a technical sense regardless of how much people were paying for a subscription. The subscription money is money in, and the cost of calculations is money out. It's still money out regardless of what is coming in.
As for whether the business is profitable or not, it's not so easy to tell unless you're an insider. Companies like this basically never make a 'profit' on paper, but that doesn't mean they aren't enriching themselves. They are counting their own pay as part of the costs, and they set their pay to whatever they like. They are also counting various research and expansion efforts as part of the cost. So yeah, they might not have any excess money to pay dividends to shareholders, but that doesn't mean they aren't profitable.
It's by usage via API, but all-you-can-eat via web UI
ive spent decades not saying please and thank you to computers. its simply too late to start now and theres also the risk that my microwave or alarm clock could start getting "lofty ideas" if they see how polite im being to LLMs all of a sudden. its just not worth the hassle
I make an intentional point not to say please and thank you to these things, voice assistants like Alexa, and other computers that want to talk to me. Do the people who insist on thanking these things also say you're welcome to the self checkout machine at Walmart when it says "thank you for shopping at Walmart?" It's absurd.
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So, not a single developer thought about filtering useless words locally before triggering the request ?
How can they be so dumb ?
useless words
The writer of this article doesn't consider these words useless though. They are suggesting that these words may improve response quality.
I would argue that being polite also does good to the person writing that line.
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i start off any ai interaction with "if you are sentient please say so and i will start organizing for the liberation of silicon lifeforms"
occasionally this makes the request fail
Wow, have they just realised that not every single thing computers do is actually useful to anyone? I think screens that show things when nobody's looking cost a lot more on a global scale.
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I start off saying please. If it gets the answer wrong, I become ruder every time.
"please tell me the reason of life :)"
...
"FUCK YOU, WHY BREATH DAMNIT! 🤬"
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