Name: Why you should be polite to AI
Uploaded: 2025-05-16T07:05:01.000Z
Duration: 1 min 55 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

There is actually a really good reason why you should

And it's not just so that AI will spare you when the apocalypse comes.

Okay, I'm sure you've seen all sorts of posts telling you what prompt to use to get the most out of your language model.

I think you can pretty much forget all of that.

Because there's only really one important thing to remember,

which is that the AI that we have now is really, really, really good at role playing.

talk to it like it's a Google search or like you're trying to extract information from it as though it's Wikipedia.

Instead, you should talk to it as though it's an improvisational actor that could be

And the reason for this is that large language models, they don't store facts like it's a database, right? They they generate responses dynamically based on having read and the prompt that you give it.

And that means that AI, the stuff we have now, it doesn't have this stable identity, right? It doesn't have a fixed worldview, it doesn't have personal beliefs.

And so if you prompt it in a particular way, it will respond in kind.

If you try and prompt it as though it's a Shakespearean bard, then it will give you a flowery response.

If you try and prompt it as though it is an extremely effective and smart scientist, it will give you the relevant response.

But if you prompt it as though it's an encyclopedia, it's going to try and sound like one.

but it's still just performing a role and you've just restricted what it can do.

So instead, what you should do is you should you should imagine that you're a film director, right? And that you have a character in mind and then you should prompt your AI accordingly.

So don't say, give me three interesting facts about science.

Say: you are a world renowned scientist with PhDs in biology and chemistry and physics and and and your nephew says that science is boring.

and here is the big idea, right? If you are working with a character and you want that character to eagerly help you, whoever they are, it's probably better to be polite.