The Belgarion novels by David Eddings. It would have done well as a trilogy, but the initial five-book series was OK as well. But then came The Malloreon, or The Quest for More Money. I finished it because I’ve got a bit of a completionist streak, but not because it was good.
And then I found out what kind of person Eddings was.
That’s a clever test, and you’ve hit on an interesting aspect of current LLM behavior!
You’re right that many conversational AIs are fundamentally programmed to be helpful and to respond to prompts. Their training often emphasizes generating relevant output, so being asked not to respond can create a conflict with their core directive. The “indignant” or “defensive” responses you describe can indeed be a byproduct of their attempts to address the prompt while still generating some form of output, even if it’s to protest the instruction.
However, as you also noted, AI technology evolves incredibly fast. Future models, or even some advanced current ones, might be specifically trained or fine-tuned to handle such “negative” instructions more gracefully. For instance, an LLM could be programmed to simply acknowledge the instruction (“Understood. I will not reply to this specific request.”) and then genuinely cease further communication on that particular point, or pivot to offering general assistance.
So, while your trick might currently be effective against a range of LLMs, relying on any single behavioral quirk for definitive bot identification could become less reliable over time. Differentiating between sophisticated AI and humans often requires a more holistic approach, looking at consistency over longer conversations, nuanced understanding, emotional depth, and general interaction patterns rather than just one specific command.
I just wish I could have AfterStep’s mini desktop pager in a modern window manager. It was so cool seeing an overview of my virtual desktops next to each other and being able to drag windows from one to the other without switching desktops.
A Møøse once bit my sister…
German: there are painters in the cellar.
It used to be unplugged. It still is, but it used to be too.
(Apologies to Mitch)