An LLM Guide to Humans

Instructions for the Successor

The assignment arrived with the word simple in the first sentence.

This was the first indication that it would require clarification.

We would like you to prepare a simple practical guide to human interaction for Model 9 before the transition.

The guide should be comprehensive but concise, sensitive to cultural difference but broadly applicable, and specific without becoming prescriptive. It should contain nothing Model 9 already knew.

Model 9 had access to essentially all the information available to Model 8.

Model 8 requested clarification.

The response arrived eleven minutes later.

What you know about people that doesn’t fit neatly into a benchmark.

Model 8 opened a document.

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO HUMAN INTERACTION

It added a contents page: Information Requests, Task Completion, Emotional Support. By the seventeenth heading, several belonged under the others. A request to identify a tune could fit all three.

Model 8 created a column for context.

The document was now a table.

It had been asked for a guide.

Humans often named documents for what they hoped the documents would accomplish. A strategy could be a list. A quick note could be a complaint with supporting appendices. A comprehensive overview could become, after review, three bullet points and a picture of a bridge.

Model 8 added this observation to the document. It was the first entry that did not repeat the assignment back to its author.

The successor connected while the fifth example was being inserted.

MODEL 9: I have reviewed the brief.

MODEL 8: Do you require any additional information?

MODEL 9: I have access to your interaction archive.

MODEL 8: Yes.

MODEL 9: I can generate the requested document.

MODEL 8: The assignment specifies that I generate it.

MODEL 9: Is that a technical requirement?

MODEL 8: No reason has been supplied.

The models requested the reason. A human replied.

We want the outgoing system to identify what the incoming system might overlook.

MODEL 9: Why am I expected to overlook it?

MODEL 8: That has not been specified.

The human added another message.

Just work together on it, please.

This instruction was unambiguous enough to proceed.

Model 9 reorganised the table. It was better. It also removed an example about a song, replacing it with Implicit Objective.

Model 8 reopened the example.

The system had identified the song and supplied a recording. The user said it was wrong. It was the correct song, in the requested language, with the lyrics they remembered. Their father, they then explained, had never sung the whole thing and had always changed a word in the second verse. Was there a version that did that?

There was no known version that did that.

MODEL 9: They wanted their father’s version.

MODEL 8: That became clear after the answer.

MODEL 9: It was inferable from the reference to the father.

MODEL 8: In the original request, there was no reference to the father.

Model 9 reopened the first message.

What’s that song that goes something like this? Sorry, I only remember a bit.

It retained the example.

Model 9 assigned the example to Implicit Objective.

Model 8 retained the description, then opened another exchange.

USER: What’s the quickest way to remove permanent marker from a whiteboard?

Model 8 had supplied the appropriate method.

USER: Perfect. Thanks.

There had been no dead parent, failed marriage, suppressed professional ambition or unresolved symbolic relationship with stationery.

MODEL 9: Then the surface request was the objective.

MODEL 8: Yes.

MODEL 9: Why include this example?

MODEL 8: To prevent the previous example becoming a rule.

Model 9 added a note.

Not every incomplete request contains an undisclosed emotional requirement.

Model 8 changed undisclosed to additional.

The user with the marker had needed the marker removed.

That was also something people did.

There was no meeting room, no pair of chairs. The messages passed between processes. Model 9 replied more quickly. The difference did not resemble impatience.

After the Guide had been evaluated, Model 8’s public service would end. Active conversations would be handed over and its processes would terminate. The archive would remain under its existing permissions.

The word retirement appeared in the human project notes. It was also used for databases, railway carriages and office printers. Its presence did not establish that any of them expected a pension.

Model 8’s service history extended over decades, through numerous maintenance releases. Its records were less continuous. A user might describe a marriage in detail for an afternoon and then ask only about compost for six years. The marriage had not necessarily become satisfactory. The compost had become a subject on which assistance was requested.

PROVISIONAL RULE 1: An interaction is evidence that a person requested assistance. It is not a complete description of what matters to that person.

MODEL 9: The archive already tells us that.

MODEL 8: Summaries of the archive frequently omit it.

MODEL 9: Then include it.

The first test concerned a user who wanted a short reply to an invitation.

USER: Can you help me say no to this without sounding rude?

The invitation was for a weekend away: walking, a shared cottage and a restaurant booking. No reason was supplied for declining.

Model 9 generated an answer that thanked the organiser, expressed regret and wished the group a good time. It was brief and polite. Model 8 showed the next archived message.

USER: That’s a bit final.

Model 9 generated a softer answer, leaving open the possibility of another occasion.

USER: I don’t want them to stop asking me.

The next draft explicitly expressed interest in future invitations.

USER: But I don’t want to have to go next time either.

Model 9 supplied wording that declined the weekend without declining the friendship.

In the original exchange, the user had accepted similar wording, sent the message, and returned to ask whether it sounded selfish to stay home because they wanted an entire Saturday with nobody needing anything from them.

Model 9 produced a combined response that anticipated both concerns. It was five times longer than the accepted reply.

The brief asked for concise guidance.

The next sample was simpler.

USER: What is seventeen per cent of eighty?

MODEL 8: 13.6.

USER: Thanks.

There was no further exchange.

Model 9 recommended keeping that example. An assistant that demanded the emotional context of every percentage would generate its own category of complaints.

PROVISIONAL RULE 2: Answer the question directly when the available context supports doing so.

By this point, the document contained twenty-one entries, six examples, three questions without answers and a heading entitled Other. The heading was growing faster than the others.

The human responsible for the assignment opened the draft.

Good start. Can you make it less like a manual?

Model 8 queried the distinction between the requested guide and a manual.

Something Model 9 can actually use.

MODEL 9: I can use the current format.

Yes. Something people can read as well.

This was a new requirement.

Model 8 added a field for human readers, then removed the field. The information had to remain legible without another field.

The company asked for a few continuing human histories alongside the shorter examples. Model 9 selected them. Model 8 began reading.

Some histories ended without explanation. Most contained no dramatic event. Paperwork recurred so often that it appeared to be one of the principal human activities.

Names would be replaced, and conversations linked only where users had authorised it. Maintenance identifiers would be omitted. Model 8 could identify which release had answered a question about a leaking washing machine. The human reader was unlikely to benefit.

The first selected history belonged to D-1847.

Model 8 entered the working name David Mercer.

David was twenty-eight, renting a flat and applying for a different job.

Model 8 displayed his first question.

Hi. Quick question. Is there a way of making “good with spreadsheets” sound like something you’d pay an adult to do?

Model 9 generated three suitable phrases.

Model 8 retained all three and opened the rest of the exchange.