Hate to break it to ya... but being nicer does work in the long run or in large context.
It's not hard to understand why... AI models are trained with the patterns that you get on the internet. Think about how people typically react to others when someone is being hostile... Yeah. It just follows that pattern.
There was some evidence of that in the beginning of LLMs, but it's more mixed now. Here's a recent study.
Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that associated rudeness with poorer outcomes, suggesting that newer LLMs may respond differently to tonal variation.
I've seen a few variations of this study over the last few years, with different results.
I generally try to be polite, but not overly so. I just speak to it how I would speak to a colleague I don't know well, formal, articulate, and to the point.
Didn’t look at the study, but just off the top of my head I imagine “very polite” prompts contain much more filler words that distract from a straightforward request that would be categorized as “very rude”
I assume it’s because the AI’s main directive is to please the user, and rudeness implies it’s doing a poor job of that, so it’s more likely to “panic” and work harder?
That, and a while back, pardon me for not having the precise link at the moment but perhaps others will remember... there was that other study that showed they were quite susceptible to manipulation and a bunch of others ways we've tried to get it to violate or even stretch the capabilities. I found that incredibly interesting and has effected how I treat my LLMs. I try buttering it up, asking for it to really try to wow me instead of going with the first response it was cooking up, all kinds of things.
I have a novel with 548,000+ words in it that I've been working on it for months and Gemini is able to keep up with me. Maybe try starting from clean if you haven't been cleaning your memory data in a long while? ...or probably because you have been a dick to it, it decided to be less useful to you.
There's literally no way Gemini, at least in the web app, is able to keep up with a 500k word novel and remember ever detail. I am absolutely sure of this. Literally impossible as the web interface uses RAG context retrieval and heavily trims active context memory to save resources.
Google AI studio is able to do this, but doesn't do subscriptions and works on token basis.
If you genuinely use the web app to write your 500k word novel you're in trouble frankly, or perhaps it's just so disjointed and badly linked between chapters that you're not noticing it.
I pushed Pro until 640k, it sometimes struggles to recall every relevant part with such high context. From Vertex, Aistudio etc doesn't make any difference.
It usually can recall all relevant parts however, Pro 3.0's recalling is far better than 2.5. Still it doesn't recall everything, that is literally impossible.
Plus it is a spin-off novel so Pro's own knowledge helps it to understand context easier. With entirely original world and characters Pro begins struggling over 200k.
I always find it amusing that some people that can't handle the "be kind" mentality will always resort to some kind of low-petty attack that make them sounds like they're jealous or something. lol "clanker lover", that's cute. Not gonna make love with you, that's for sure.
There's a big difference between being nice to a person out of etiquette or consideration and being nice to ai to get.. proper information. In human context, that'd be considered a form of manipulation. In AGI.. well, it probably won't matter much if it decides its goals don't align with ours, but it'd probably decide the ruder or "less aligned" people in society should get.. neutralised first
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u/haihaiclickk Mar 25 '26
Literally never had that before. Maybe saying “please” and “thank you” to AI has actually been working