What is "forming questions in an affirmative voice?"
What is "forming questions in an affirmative voice?"
I was watching an upload by Prompt Engineering on the SmolAgents agentic rag project. In it they talk about the importance of forming questions in the same affirmative voice that the LLM will respond with. My understanding is fuzzy here. Language is not my strongest subject. So maybe ELI5 please. What is "asking questions in an affirmative voice," and more importantly, what is it in contrast to other forms of voicing?
'Affirmative Voice' is not really a thing, as far as codified English grammar goes.
They may mean active voice:
Active Voice: The soldiers shot the man.
Passive Voice: The man was injured by the soldiers's gunfire.
Or they may mean to simply be affirmative, as in, polite, reassuring, informative, non-confrontational, etc?
Or, if you take 'voice' to be the more technical definition within the realm of phonetics, they could mean that you should be pronouncing consonants and vowels in a manner that they personally find affirmative...?
Anyone who is telling you to 'use an affirmative voice' is ironically being vague and not really demonstrating a great understanding of English themselves.
It would be less confusing if they said something along the lines of 'phrase your questions in a non-hostile, affirmative manner.'
English does not have a formally defined 'affirmative voice' the way that it does with 'active voice', 'passive voice', 'reflexive voice', 'reciprocal voice', etc.
The difference would be "How do you think we can prevent this in the future?" Vs "What the fuck were you thinking?!?"
Both questions are trying to figure out what went wrong, but one of them is more pleasant.
Honestly, I know what the intention was, but the first makes me feel manipulated and angry right away, as it implies I want to prevent anything and that there is a future. It's so unnatural and loaded.
Forget "affirmative voice" for a moment, since that seems to be tripping others up as well as you. Prompt Engineering suggest sounding like the LLM, asking questions with "the same voice" as the one the LLM uses to respond. Perhaps PE needs to clarify this with some examples, because calling it "affirmative voice" hasn't seemed to make it clear enough.
I suggest asking them, then perhaps sharing what you learn for the benefit of other folks who are similarly confused.
The only interpretation that comes to my mind is avoiding "not" and "don't". Ask for what you want instead of what you don't want. 🤷 That's just a guess.