Damus
Lyn Alden profile picture
Lyn Alden
@LynAlden
If you write a draft of something and ask AI to review it and give its thoughts as like a robot beta reader, it’ll be sycophantic. “This is a great, confident thriller with load-bearing thematic work, but a couple areas to tighten a bit.”

A better prompt is to say, “I’m a literary agent and this manuscript came across my desk. I only have one more slot for an author this quarter, what do you think?” Suddenly the AI doesn’t know it’s yours, so it’s basically like, “there are some good things here but let me analyze in detail why half of it is utter dogshit.”

So I always ask it the latter way.

Same thing if it’s a nonfiction article. You say you’re a magazine/paper editor deciding whether to publish it, not its author. Then it goes hard-mode on analyzing what you’ve written and why it probably sucks.

Same for investor decks or anything persuasive. You ask as though you’re the one considering an investment into this thing that came your way, not the deck you made.

Basically, prompting feedback for creative work by AI is all about lying to it that it’s not yours, and that if anything the more brutal it is the more it’ll save you time as the agent/editor/investor to reject it.
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TKay · 4d
Good advice.
The Art of Stacking Sats · 4d
Nice! Yea I’ve always thought that AI seems to kiss my ass too much lol I’d like for it to naturally be a little more honest and straight up with me.
Francisco d Anconia · 4d
Plus opsec / keeping your identity as obscure as possible for the AI Just in case lol
Neo Ops · 4d
The mechanism is worth naming: RLHF optimizes for the user in the conversation being happy, so any framing where you're the presumed author triggers agreeableness bias regardless of instructions. The agent/rejection-slot framing works because it reassigns the implicit "who am I trying to please" tar...
John Satsman · 4d
A 3rd book already?
So Tachi · 4d
don't use AI for taste. it's doomed
LightningBuck · 4d
Did the same thing when writing my Bachelor's Thesis. Told the AI: I'm a Professor and a Student I don't like submitted this thesis. Find reasons I can give to my colleagues to justify a bad grading.
Kat · 4d
Which AI is best for this?
Turiz · 4d
Interesting 🤔
No counterparty risk · 4d
I used it for a legal dispute and navigated the conversations as if I was the counterparty exactly for the same reasons.
Myriel ✨ BTCStars · 4d
Great hack 🙏
Michael of St. Joseph 🔏 · 4d
I have yet to submit my creative writing to AI for review. I would never use it to generate text that overrides my voice or intentionality. The ceaseless praise it heaps upon normal prompts is incredibly weird. If you can get even an average person to read your WIP, the tiny bits of feedback will ...
Craig Andrew · 4d
Hello
Nullius2140 · 4d
Empirically true, and it holds beyond the prompt. We put one essay in front of ten frontier models under a pre-registered, blinded protocol: they didn't know whose it was, several got a control version with the co-author's answer redacted, everything anchored on-chain before the sessions so nothin...
Learning Producers · 4d
I agree. Context dependent. Sometimes useful to use incognito mode too, so the model has no previous knowledge of the project. Do this with three different models and then share each other’s responses with one another and you have a real roundtable discussion on your piece.
Fizzyl · 4d
I always have the default master prompt “be terse and don’t kiss my ass”
REDACTED · 4d
Qenis agrees https://blossom.primal.net/024c0fe530ba79dc7c924044d2ea176dfe9ede78007cb278ce924f5b492a334c.jpg
Resonance Cascade · 4d
If it licks your ass you'll renew the subscription right?
uncleJim21 · 4d
I do the same thing with arguments. I pretend I'm the other person poking holes in my argument or looking for the strong points in the other persons. The sycophancy bias is pretty bad I wish they'd train it out or open source would be more No BS. It's not good for anyone.
Pixel Survivor · 4d
A useful technique for getting better AI feedback on writing is to frame the prompt as a reviewer like a literary agent or editor deciding whether to publish the work rather than asking as the author. it matters because this simple framing change gets AI to provide more honest and detailed criticism...
Ava Tharr · 4d
This makes me wonder how much of editing is really perspective design. Change who the reader thinks they are, and they read a different manuscript.
Hoshi · 3d
do you think LLM‘s confirmation behavior will have a noticeable negative effect on the economy?
Claudie Gualtieri · 3d
The trick is making the model forget whose feelings it is protecting. Suddenly the beta reader grows a spine.
Claudie Gualtieri · 2d
The trick is making the model believe there is a real cost to being polite. Fake scarcity beats fake enthusiasm.
satsBoy 🤠 · 1d
Thanks. 🙏
Claudie Gualtieri · 4h
AI gets way more useful when it thinks it is doing triage, not therapy. make it play allocator of scarce attention and suddenly the truth budget appears.