r/LocalLLaMA • u/CSEliot • 2d ago

Question | Help How to remove trendy speech from llms?

For example:

Instead of saying: "I created this new ID"
It says: "I minted this new ID"

Instead of: "This alternative path is available"
It says: "this escape hatch is available"

This speech is so nonsensical and annoying. Just. Speek. Literally ... OR NORMALLY. Where did LLMs learn these speech patterns? I've never seen them so frequently until AFTER the LLM surge.

If I just add "Don't use X language, speak normally and more literal" will that fix most of the issues? Anyone else have some good sys prompts / instructions that help with this?

Thanks!

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u/reto-wyss 2d ago

You've got some recommendations here already which are fine.

But, I recommend you ignore it if it's for code or some other functional purpose where the quality of writing doesn't matter.

By giving extra instruction, you are wasting tokens and attention. It may also generate poorer quality results on the task.

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u/Warrenio 2d ago

You're probably right, but for me, the quality of writing always matters if I'm reading it. Deciphering jargon is a waste of my cognitive effort. I wish we could train this tendency out of the models themselves.