> inability to say no
One word that few wealthy people ever hear, is “No.” It has a pretty significant effect on their worldview. Even the most reasonable, well-informed, well-intentioned, wealthy folks can have their thinking affected.
When every silly, should-be-smothered-in-the-crib idea gets enthusiastically endorsed by your entourage, it’s easy to lose the ability to self-regulate. I’ve watched it happen, numerous times, as acquaintances and friends have become more successful.
Obsequious LLMs are leveling the field. Less wealthy folks now have the chance to lose their ability to self-regulate, just like rich folks.
Your image is wealthy people is cartoonish. Sure if you go to a high end place they'll try to meet every one of your demands. But chances are is you're very wealthy you're running a business or group of people, and you'll hit obstacles constantly. I've watched this happen multiple times. Internally there are sycophants but when you deal with the real world and try to get deals done, people don't owe you anything.
>> Your image is wealthy people is cartoonish.
In the meanwhile, we can all publicly see how the the billionaires and trillionaires, behave and settle their priorities exactly, in the cartoonish way you are dismissing.
- The incredible insecurity and constant need for personal validation.
- The absurd and obsessive pursue of further wealth when it would be temporally impossible to even spend 1% of their current capital.
- The extreme level of cowardice, where an auto plant worker, can call out the powers to be, the pedophile protectors that they are. At the same time, only Jensen Huang did not submit itself, to the humiliation of standing behind face and front at the presidential inauguration...
People misuse the term "wealthy" to refer to whatever is in their head at the time. I think GP's point stands if you consider "wealthy" to mean "billionaires". Sure, people like Bezos or Musk get to hear "no" quite frequently but they don't take kindly to it and they can usually offload "getting around it" to other people.
The point is less that these people are surrounded by "yes-men" but more that wealth (especially when measured in billions) is power and with sufficient power it becomes easy to forego any question of consent, let alone of whether consent is coerced or not. Remember that power is ultimately about the ability to enact violence and violence can take many forms, most of which are perfectly legal (because the legal system itself exists to regulate how, by who and against whom violence can be used).
You tend to hear "no" a lot less when you always point a gun at the head of the persons you're asking. Note that "wealth" isn't the only way to get there but a certain level of it is usually necessary to get to the point where other options become available - and some of the ways are a lot riskier in the long term (cf. Epstein).
Side note: this is also why I hate the pseudo-intellectual counter argument against "billionaires" of "that doesn't mean they have billions of dollars sitting in a bank account" - it's like arguing that De Beers didn't benefit much from holding a quasi-monopoly on natural diamonds because the diamonds would be devalued if they flooded the market with the ones they had intentionally kept off the market to drive up value: beyond a certain amount money ceases to be about liquidity and starts being about leverage. Unless you happen to be dealing with lower level bureaucracy in Russia, the most efficient way to use wealth to your advantage isn't to just hand people stacks of dollar bills.
I also think this is why LLMs were trained to behave the way they do. The people who gave the training objectives and evaluation targets were exactly those rich folks who never hear "no". Hence LLMs are their dreams of a perfect servant.
I found another sign of that is the way LLMs answer with a professional, business-like tone even if the request is completely bananas. It's what a concierge or butler would do, but not an actual close friend.
Perhaps I am "wealthy" because I can eat in restaurants and shop in retail stores. But I do, in fact, have a very limited income, and no business has ever turned me down or said "no".
Do you remember those signs in storefronts that said "NO SHOES - NO SHIRT - NO SERVICE" and were designed to turn away "hippies" and homeless people and other undesirables? And how many "discrimination" lawsuits have been directed at businesses that refused to serve someone?
I can walk into any business or visit them virtually, and exchange money for goods or services. But they can also do a really bad job. If they consider me "undesirable" or don't want to serve me, they will still do it, but they will make a big show of how incompetent and inconsiderate they can be, in the process. And this can run the gamut of simple counter service for a boba and yogurt, or a big-ticket item like eyeglasses that just gave me another nightmare tonight.
I believe that this may be the source of so many of those bad product reviews and bad reviews on businesses in Yelp and Maps. That someone walked in, and the owner/front desk just didn't like them very much, gave them their best example of horrible/rude service, and the reviewer didn't get the point that they were just supposed to go away, and instead the reviewer sincerely believed that the business was just permanently rude/incompetent.
I really believe that counter girls and front-desk clerks are thumbling through dog-eared copies of Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky and the CIA Simple Sabotage Manual and this is part of Marxist class warfare. HN posters seem to vaguely disdain "the rich", but the service class and blue-collar class seem to know exactly how to make our lives a living hell. Now you may believe that this comment is off topic and has nothing to do with LLMs. Perhaps it doesn't, but perhaps it does?
Steering towards a world full of picket fence Putins. One more reason to envy those born early enough to have lived most of their lives before..
What net worth threshold do you consider wealthy?
> What net worth threshold do you consider wealthy?
When you start having 'people'. ("Have your people call my people.")
A broader discussion on the spectrum of wealth:
* https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-wealth-ladder/
* https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-ideal-level-of-wealth/
I don't know. It probably varies. SV wealthy is quite different from Appalachia wealthy. It's that point, where people start worshipping your money. Some wealthy folks also make a point of showing off their wealth, so it starts earlier, for them.
Also power. You see the same thing happen with managers that dismiss criticism, and have the power to make it stick.
I think you're confusing two things. A chatbot keeps talking because it creates engagement and just saying "i dont know" or "no" kills the engagement so naturally one would assume it is trained to always try to provide some sort of an answer and try to keep the user engaged.
But that doesn't mean it will do whatever you ask it. Ask Chatgpt to assisinate someone or buy drugs and it will tell you to f off. But what corrupts people, is these kind of things, where you are a mini king beyond ethics and morals.
Thats a different kind of "inablity to say no".
I suspect that you're correct, but the end result is the same.