Not to be too pedantic, but these requests would not be exactly the same.
There is a bit of indexicality in "Would you hand me that item ?"
that might cause it to be interpreted as an actual question rather than a request, and might elicit different responses:
- maybe _I_ would not hand this to you (I'm busy right now), but the person next to me whose hands are free would, so I'd nod to them. However, if you had said "Please hand me that item" I'd put down what I was doing to comply.
- maybe I would not hand _this_ to you (it's not the right tool IMO), but I'd suggest another option. However, if you had said "Please hand me that item" I'd put my doubts aside to comply.
- maybe I would not hand this to _you_ (you're not the one who should be handling it), but I'd do the thing myself or hand it to a more qualified member of the group. However, if you had said "Please hand me that item" I'd trust you enough to comply.
I think this distinction is relevant in that I've found people to sometimes have difficulties understanding how similar LLM prompting is to giving instructions to human colleagues.
I've had a collaborator who though very highly of his own prompting skills (while his prompts were very ambiguous and of the "make no mistakes, erase everything & correct yourself if you find one" variety) and blamed the models for not being "smart enough", and it was very noticeable that his management style for the juniors on his team was similarly unproductive.
There is a bit of indexicality in "Would you hand me that item ?"
that might cause it to be interpreted as an actual question rather than a request, and might elicit different responses:
- maybe _I_ would not hand this to you (I'm busy right now), but the person next to me whose hands are free would, so I'd nod to them. However, if you had said "Please hand me that item" I'd put down what I was doing to comply.
- maybe I would not hand _this_ to you (it's not the right tool IMO), but I'd suggest another option. However, if you had said "Please hand me that item" I'd put my doubts aside to comply.
- maybe I would not hand this to _you_ (you're not the one who should be handling it), but I'd do the thing myself or hand it to a more qualified member of the group. However, if you had said "Please hand me that item" I'd trust you enough to comply.
I think this distinction is relevant in that I've found people to sometimes have difficulties understanding how similar LLM prompting is to giving instructions to human colleagues.
I've had a collaborator who though very highly of his own prompting skills (while his prompts were very ambiguous and of the "make no mistakes, erase everything & correct yourself if you find one" variety) and blamed the models for not being "smart enough", and it was very noticeable that his management style for the juniors on his team was similarly unproductive.