Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence (2025) (arxiv.org)
30 points by robin_reala 2 hours ago
Kattywumpus 25 minutes ago
I don't know. Upvotes often do the same thing, especially in siloed communities. I feel like this is a larger problem -- people leaning into extremifying their views or just playing to an audience -- even though one might frame it as "prosocial" because it happens within the context of an online community.
smcg 8 minutes ago
Both could be true. People follow incentives.
accountrequired an hour ago
You're absolutely right!
pwdisswordfishq 3 minutes ago
It's a pretty overdone joke at this point, don't you think?
LAC-Tech an hour ago
I think this goes along way to explain people's very defensive reactions when you are skeptical about Agentic Development.
artnanika 29 minutes ago
Those are two different things. Chatgpt being sycophantic while playing the role of a therapist with a teenager is much different from Codex being sycophantic while reviewing user feedback. The former is extremely dangerous for society.
qarl2 32 minutes ago
I'm one of the people who gets accused of this. I don't mind skepticism. But every time I turn around, someone's claiming nobody gets any value from these tools and anyone who says otherwise is deluded or running a scam. That gets really old.
atleastoptimal an hour ago
This is true, but likely happening in talk therapy too with overly sycyphantic therapists
jalev an hour ago
Sure, but there is a marked difference between a therapist and an LLM Chatbot: you can't talk to your therapist for +4h a day, at any time convenient to yourself. It's also not a guarantee you're going to hit upon a therapist that is like that, versus a product that is very literally intended to maximise your usage of it.
paimapi 42 minutes ago
a therapist should, if they follow their training, not be a sycophant whatsoever. CBT, for eg, is a multi-step process including Socratic self-dialogue, reframing practices, etc to guide the person towards the development of insight and healthier coping mechanisms