[HN Gopher] Oh fuck! How do people feel about robots that levera...
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Oh fuck! How do people feel about robots that leverage profanity?
Author : rolph
Score : 14 points
Date : 2025-06-03 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| rolph wrote:
| the actual title seems to be unacceptable, however the obvious
| profanity version is.
|
| [pseudo]actual title :
|
| "Oh F**k! How Do People Feel about Robots that Leverage
| Profanity?"
|
| even this breaks, very interesting
| pvg wrote:
| HN _fucks_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39392726
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44122636
| kingforaday wrote:
| So does Jared Dunn from Silicon Valley.
| zfnmxt wrote:
| Good; censoring profanity (especially self-censoring) is for
| cowards. Be brave and dish out your fucks liberally in your
| papers!
| sim7c00 wrote:
| interesting paper / idea. i like the idea of a robot or ai who
| uses profanity like a regular person (if thats ur thing, guess it
| depends on ur context). i know people who instruct their ai
| assistants to be rude, mean or profane because they listen better
| to that. like asking it to tell you to RTFM if you ask a question
| thats trivially answered (compared to some further context you
| specify , or not).
|
| i suppose everyone learns to listen better to certain personas
| through their lifes experiences, so its good to be able to tune
| it towards personal preferences and not but overly protective or
| conservative limits or restrictions. (obviously thats a snake pit
| so i do totally understand tight restrictions)
| mrandish wrote:
| The default obsequious, yuppie buddy chatbot personas of today
| make me hate them. Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker's Guide
| perfectly captured the infuriating annoyance of machines
| programmed to act like overly polite friends when he had the
| automatic doors always tell you how _delighted_ they were to
| open for you.
|
| It's a machine, dammit. One of its (potential) advantages vs
| hiring a human is _not_ having extraneous transactional
| exchanges. If my personal AI assistant had to have a persona, I
| 'd rather it sound and talk like Joe Pesci from Goodfellas.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| I object to using "leverage" to mean "use".
| frereubu wrote:
| I'm so old I object to "leverage" as a verb.
| jjmarr wrote:
| Swearing increases the effectiveness of other words.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Normal robot: "Going into that room could be hazardous or
| lead to death"
|
| Bender: "If you go in that room you're going to fucking die"
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Or decreases the effectiveness, as the listener perceives
| pain or offense or low intelligence, and tunes out the rest
| of the utterance.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| Absolutely - repeated profanity is an invitation to ignore
| the speaker.
| mousethatroared wrote:
| It's very poignant though. A robot swearing at you to obey its
| masters gives leverage to its owners.
| avsteele wrote:
| Profanity should not be in the title of scientific articles. Most
| unprofessional. In addition, titling your article for shock value
| should be discouraged. The end point will be a degraded
| discourse.
| zfnmxt wrote:
| Professionalism is not a virtue; measured irreverence is---an
| uncensored "Fuck" in this scenario falls into that category.
|
| Silliness has an important and necessary place in research.
| avsteele wrote:
| NOT in professional communication. If you want to run your
| lab that way, feel free.
| ghssds wrote:
| We tell children to don't use profanity because they have a
| hard time regulating themselves. Telling adults to do the same
| is misplaced authoritarian behavior, the kind that may come
| from people who failed to mature and still obey (and repeat)
| what they were told as a child but now sound obsequious.
| arp242 wrote:
| I've joined jobs and the first thing people said to me is "ah,
| you must be the new cunt!"
|
| Different people have different standards for this type of
| thing. Be a good cunt and accept that there are over 8 billion
| people on the world, some of whom have very different norms
| than you have. Don't declare your own standards as somehow
| authoritative.
| avsteele wrote:
| We have certain professional communications standards in the
| scientific community. This isn't a corner bar.
| koolba wrote:
| > I've joined jobs and the first thing people said to me is
| "ah, you must be the new cunt!"
|
| The reaction to that welcome is highly location dependent.
| mousethatroared wrote:
| Tails are what get you though.
|
| I'd probably smash a robot that swore at me or my family.
|
| "Tell your c---t daughter to get off the street"
|
| Will probably result in me looking for a heavy stone.
|
| Swear words are literally fighting words whilst a robot cannot,
| legally, be assaulted. I'll take destruction of property to
| defend my daughter's honor to a jury of normies.
| Swizec wrote:
| I'd prefer swearing over a robot who says " _Per my last email_
| , ..."
|
| But let's be honest: The thing we're both afraid of is a robot
| who can get impatient and emotional.
| mousethatroared wrote:
| They've already programmed impatience to the chat bots in
| federal government offices. Get testy and they'll hang up on
| you. However, they can't get emotional, they lack soul.
| delichon wrote:
| You don't want me on that jury. But if you pick up a heavy
| civil suit instead of a stone, you do.
| mousethatroared wrote:
| Civil suit for what?
|
| It needs to get to a jury and for that the prosecutor needs
| to think he'll win.
|
| I doubt most prosecutors will stake their conviction ratio
| for a very sympathetic defendant.
| teddyh wrote:
| "But Orcs and Trolls spoke as they would, without love of words
| or things; and their language was actually more degraded and
| filthy than I have shown it. I do not suppose that any will wish
| for a closer rendering, though models are easy to find. Much the
| same sort of talk can still be heard among the orc-minded; dreary
| and repetitive with hatred and contempt, too long removed from
| good to retain even verbal vigour, save in the ears of those to
| whom only the squalid sounds strong."
|
| -- J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Lord of the Rings_ , Appendix F, Part II,
| _On Translation_
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Swearing is very _location_ dependent, as a Brit, and a northern
| one at that, peppering a few swear words in may not be that
| unusual. This can, erm how shall we put it, 'surprise' some
| others.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| My first question would be: Why? As in: Why do we even need or
| want to program robots to use profanity?
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