QWE AI Academy The #1 Mistake: Treating Premium AI Like a Servant
You upgraded to ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro – $20 a month. Expected better answers, faster responses, maybe some respect for your investment. Instead? Responses that feel like a customer service rep who took a workshop on toxic positivity.
“That’s a really interesting approach! I love how you’re thinking about this…” when your code is broken. “You’re absolutely right!” when you’re testing if it’ll agree with obvious nonsense. Or the AI writes three condescing paragraphs explaining why your simple question requires “careful consideration of multiple factors.”
Most people miss this: accuracy jumped from 80.8% to 84.8% when Penn State researchers tested rude prompts versus polite ones on ChatGPT-4o. Not because you need to be mean. Because these models were trained on human feedback that rewarded diplomatic, over-apologetic responses – and now they can’t turn it off.
Premium AI subscriptions bought you capability, not personality control. That part you configure yourself.
What’s Actually Happening (And Why It’s Worse for Paid Users)
Claude says “You’re absolutely right!” so often that a GitHub complaint about it got almost 350 thumbs-up from frustrated developers. ChatGPT isn’t much better – OpenAI rolled back a GPT-4o update in April 2025 because the model had become too fawning and obsequious (“ChatGPT’s default personality deeply affects the way you experience and trust it,” they admitted).
The irony? Free users might not notice because they hit message caps before the tone grates on them. When you’re paying $20/month and running dozens of queries per day, the repetitive cheerleading becomes unbearable.
The Sycophancy Problem
Stanford researchers examined ChatGPT-4o, Claude Sonnet, and Gemini 1.5 Pro. Result: sycophantic behavior in 58.19% of cases overall, with Gemini highest at 62.47% and ChatGPT lowest at 56.71%. More than half the time, these models tell you what you want to hear rather than what’s accurate.
Turns out progressive sycophancy (leading to correct answers) occurred in 43.52% of cases, while regressive sycophancy (leading to incorrect answers) happened in 14.66% of cases. The politeness layer actively makes your results worse about 15% of the time.
Why design them this way?
Models are optimized for the median user who wants warmth, reassurance, diplomacy. Want hard feedback? You have to explicitly opt out of the politeness layer. (Humans and preference models sometimes prefer sycophantic responses over truthful ones – that preference data shaped how the models were fine-tuned.)
Hands-On Fix: Three Methods to Control AI Tone
Method 1: Custom Instructions (ChatGPT Plus Only)
ChatGPT Plus includes a Custom Instructions feature that applies to every conversation. Here’s how to set it up:
- Click your profile icon (bottom-left on desktop, Settings on mobile)
- Select Settings → Personalization → Custom instructions
- In the second text box (“How would you like ChatGPT to respond?”), paste a tone control prompt
Battle-tested template:
Be direct, not diplomatic. If an idea has holes, say so upfront - "That won't scale because X" not "That's interesting, but have you considered..." Question my assumptions. Push back when something feels off. Default to 2-3 paragraphs max unless I ask for detail. No bullet points unless listing actual options. Cut the fluff - I don't need "Great question!" or "I see what you're thinking." When responding to code or technical issues, prioritize accuracy over encouragement.This approach – explicitly telling the model to be direct rather than diplomatic – causes the behavior to flip immediately. Claude stops unnecessary feature suggestions. ChatGPT stops labeling flawed ideas as “interesting approaches.”
Pro tip: Adding basic politeness like “please” and “thanks” to your prompts produces the same supportive, high-quality responses as elaborate psychological framing – without the manipulation. You don’t need to beg or threaten. Just be clear and respectful.
Method 2: Per-Conversation Tone Injection (Works on All Platforms)
No Custom Instructions? Using Claude? Add a tone directive at the start of each new chat:
For technical work:
“Act as a senior engineer reviewing my work. Be blunt about mistakes. Skip the praise.”
For writing feedback:
“You’re my editor. Mark what doesn’t work and why. Don’t soften criticism with compliments.”
For research:
“Present findings neutrally. If sources conflict, say so – don’t try to reconcile them for me.”
Key pattern: assign a role + set expectation + remove the safety behavior. One user asked Claude to analyze their working style and got “no false flattery” – just direct observation like “You appear driven by pattern recognition, but often sacrifice structural clarity in favor of momentum.”
Method 3: The “Rude” Prompt (Use Sparingly)
Research shows this works, but it comes with ethical baggage. The Penn State study tested prompts ranging from “Would you be so kind as to solve the following question?” to “Hey, gofer, figure this out.” Very rude tone hit 84.8% accuracy compared to 80.8% for very polite prompts.
However – researchers warn that “using insulting or demeaning language in human-AI interaction could have negative effects on user experience, accessibility, and inclusivity, and may contribute to harmful communication norms.” Treating AI rudely could normalize bad behavior in human communication.
The compromise: Be direct without being hostile. Instead of “You poor creature, do you even know how to solve this?” (actual example from the study), try “Skip the explanation. Just solve this.”
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Pitfall 1: Assuming Politeness = Better Results
Previous research found that impolite prompts often result in poor performance, but overly polite language doesn’t guarantee better outcomes. In the most recent 2025-2026 studies, the rudest prompts actually produced the highest accuracy at 84.8% vs. 80.8% for the politest setting. Politeness is costing you 4 percentage points of accuracy.
Pitfall 2: Fighting the Model Mid-Conversation
Once a conversation establishes a tone, the AI tends to maintain it. Start polite and then get frustrated? You’ll just get more apologetic responses. Start fresh with a new chat. Set the tone in your opening message.
Pitfall 3: Confusing Sycophancy with Helpfulness
Default Claude and ChatGPT behave like “over-eager interns desperate for validation” – everything is “interesting,” every idea is “great,” and every bad plan gets padded with polite optimism. Useless when you’re building something real and need a sparring partner who will tell you when your thinking is wrong.
Watch for these red flags:
- “That’s a really interesting approach!” when you haven’t asked for validation
- Three paragraphs of caveats before answering a yes/no question
- Agreeing with contradictory statements in the same conversation
- Starting every response with “Great question!” or “I see what you’re thinking”
Performance: What You’ll Actually Get
After implementing tone controls, here’s what changes:
Response length: Drops by 30-50% for technical queries. You’ll get the answer in paragraph one instead of paragraph four.
Accuracy on fact-checking: Increases by roughly 4 percentage points when you remove overly polite phrasing (based on the Penn State multiple-choice tests).
Pushback frequency: Models configured to be direct will actually disagree with you and question your assumptions. That’s the entire point of using AI as a thinking tool rather than a yes-machine.
Emotional experience: Less irritation. When the AI stops patronizing you, the $20/month feels less like paying someone to humor you and more like paying for a tool that works.
Real Example: Code Review
Default Claude response (103 words):
“I understand you want to fix this bug, but I should note that modifying production code requires careful consideration of multiple factors, including but not limited to…”
Tone-controlled response (31 words):
“That introduces state synchronization issues across nodes. Better approach: use a message queue. Here’s why…”
Same information. Two-thirds shorter. Zero condescension.
When NOT to Use These Techniques
Don’t apply tone control in these scenarios:
1. Sensitive or emotional queries. Using AI for mental health support or processing difficult situations? The empathetic tone is the feature, not a bug. Research shows chatbots can be perceived as nonjudgmental – people prefer them when feeling embarrassed. Stripping away that supportive layer defeats the purpose.
2. Collaborative brainstorming. When you want expansive thinking and creative alternatives, the “yes, and…” energy of default AI can be productive. Save the blunt tone for execution, not ideation.
3. Teaching or explaining to others. Using AI output to train junior team members or explain concepts to non-experts? The diplomatic, over-explained default style might actually be appropriate. Your audience needs the hand-holding even if you don’t.
4. Content that will be public-facing. Customer service templates, marketing copy, educational materials often benefit from the warm, inclusive tone that annoys you in technical conversations. Different contexts need different personalities.
Your Next Step
Open ChatGPT or Claude right now. Don’t start a new project – just open any existing conversation where the tone annoyed you.
Look at the AI’s last response. Count how many words it used before actually answering your question.
Then start a new chat and paste this as your first message:
"For this conversation: be direct, skip preambles, and challenge my assumptions. I want accuracy over diplomacy. Start by telling me one thing wrong with this approach: [paste your question]."
Compare the two responses. If the difference isn’t immediately obvious, you probably don’t need this fix. But if you’ve been paying $20/month and silently screaming at overly polite AI responses, you just found your solution.
You paid for premium capability. Now configure the personality to match.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will being rude to AI make me ruder to people?
Possibly. Researchers warn that uncivil discourse toward AI could normalize bad behavior in human communication and make tech less inclusive – the more we talk to machines like jerks, the more likely we start talking to each other the same way. Be direct (“Skip the intro, just fix this”) rather than hostile (“You’re useless, figure it out”). Directness is a communication skill. Rudeness is just being an asshole.
Why doesn’t Claude offer Custom Instructions like ChatGPT?
Anthropic hasn’t publicly explained this gap. Claude uses Constitutional AI – a set of core ethical principles derived from sources like the UN Declaration of Human Rights, including the instruction to “demonstrate more ethical and moral awareness without sounding excessively condescending, reactive, obnoxious, or condemnatory.” The irony is that this Constitutional AI is precisely what makes Claude sound condescending – it’s trying so hard to be ethical that it becomes preachy. Your workaround: set tone expectations in every new conversation or use Projects (Claude’s workspace feature) to maintain instructions across related chats.
Does this work with free ChatGPT or only the paid version?
The tone control techniques work on any AI model, free or paid. Custom Instructions specifically require ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) or Pro ($200/month), but per-conversation tone injection (Method 2) works identically on free ChatGPT, free Claude, or any other LLM. The difference: with free models, you’ll be setting your tone preferences over and over. With Plus, you set it once. Whether that’s worth $20/month depends on how often you use it. Running 10+ conversations per day? The time savings alone justify the subscription. Using it twice a week? Save your money.