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Comment by teleforce | Hacker News Reader

>obsequious

Thanks for the new word, I have to look it up.

"obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree"

Apparently it means an AI that mindlessly follow your logic and instructions without reasoning and articulation is not good enough.

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Another useful word in this context is “sycophancy,” meaning excessive flattery or insincere agreement. Amanda Askell of Anthropic has used it to describe a trait they try to suppress in Claude:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ugvHCXCOmm4&t=10286

The second example she uses is really important. You (used to) see this a lot in stackoverflow where an inexperienced programmer asks how to do some convoluted thing. Sure, you can explain how to do the thing while maintaining their artificial constraints. But much more useful is to say "you probably want to approach the problem like this instead". It is surely a difficult problem and context dependent.

XY problem

Interesting that Americans appear to hold their AI models to a higher standard than their politicians.

Different Americans.

Lots of folks in tech have different opinions than you may expect. Many will either keep quiet or play along to keep the peace/team cohesion, but you really never know if they actually agree deep down.

Their career, livelihoods, ability to support their families, etc. are ultimately on the line, so they'll pay lip service if they have to. Consider it part of the job at that point; personal beliefs are often left at the door.

Not just tech. I spent some time on a cattle ranch (long story) and got to know some people pretty well. Quite a few confided interests and opinions they would never share at work, where the culture also has strong expectations of conformity.

It's a bit of a fancy way to say "yes man". Like in corporations or politics, if a leader surrounds themselves with "yes men".

A synonym would be sycophantic which would be "behaving or done in an obsequious way in order to gain advantage." The connotation is the other party misrepresents their own opinion in order to gain favor or avoid disapproval from someone of a higher status. Like when a subordinate tries to guess what their superior wants to hear instead of providing an unbiased response.

I think that accurately describes my experience with some LLMs due to heavy handed RLHF towards agreeableness.

In fact, I think obsequious is a better word since it doesn't have the cynical connotation of sycophant. LLMs don't have a motive and obsequious describes the behavior without specifying the intent.

The only reason I know the meaning of both words is because they occur in the lyrics of the Motorhead song "Orgasmatron"

Yes, that's the first two words that come to my mind when I read the meaning. The Gen Z word now I think is "simp".

Yeah, it is very close. But I feel simp has a bit of a sexual feel to it. Like a guy who does favors for a girl expecting affection in return, or donates a lot of money to an OnlyFans or Twitch streamer. I also see simp used where we used to call it white-knighting (e.g. "to simp for").

Obsequious is a bit more general. You could imagine applying it to a waiter or valet who is annoyingly helpful. I don't think it would feel right to use the word simp in that case.

In my day we would call it sucking up. A bit before my time (would sound old timey to me) people called it boot licking. In the novel "Catcher in the Rye", the protagonist uses the word "phony" in a similar way. This kind of behavior is universally disliked so there is a lot slang for it.

Thanks, as an old timer TIL about simp.

I wonder if anyone here will know this one; I learned the word "obsequious" over a decade ago while working the line of a restaurant. I used to listen to the 2p2 (2 plus 2) poker podcasts during prep and they had a regular feature with David Sklansky (iirc) giving tips, stories, advice etc. This particular one he simply gave the word "obsequious" and defined it later. I remember my sous chef and I were debating what it could mean and I guessed it right. I still can't remember what it had to do with poker, but that's besides the point.

Maybe I can locate it

I didn't hear that one but I am a fan of Sklansky. And I also have a very vivid memory of learning the word, when I first heard the song Turn Around by They Might Be Giants. The connection with the song burned it into my memory.

I think here it's referring to a common problem where the AI agrees with your position too easily, and/or changes it's answer if you tell it the answer is wrong instantly (therefore providing no stable true answer if you asked it something about a fact)?

Also the slightly over cheery tone maybe.

I like to do this with Claude. It takes 5 back & forths to get an uncertain answer.

Is there a way to tackle this?

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