{"id":237848,"date":"2026-05-01T08:23:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T12:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/01\/ai-chatbots-can-prioritize-flattery-over-facts-and-that-carries-serious-risks\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T09:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:30:09","slug":"ai-chatbots-can-prioritize-flattery-over-facts-and-that-carries-serious-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/01\/ai-chatbots-can-prioritize-flattery-over-facts-and-that-carries-serious-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"AI chatbots can prioritize flattery over facts \u2013 and that carries serious risks"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI chatbots can prioritize flattery over facts \u2013 and that carries serious risks<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/theconversation.com\/ai-chatbots-can-prioritize-flattery-over-facts-and-that-carries-serious-risks-274298<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-01 08:23:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n

In the summer of 2025, OpenAI released ChatGPT 5 and removed its predecessor from the market. Many subscribers to the old model had become attached to its warm, enthusiastically agreeable tone and complained at the loss of their ingratiating robotic companion. Such was the scale of frustration that Sam Altman, OpenAI\u2019s CEO, had to acknowledge that the rollout was botched, and the company reinstated access.<\/p>\n

Anyone who\u2019s been told by a chatbot that their ideas are brilliant is familiar with artificial intelligence sycophancy: its tendency to tell users what they want to hear. Sometimes it\u2019s very explicit \u2013 \u201cthat is such a deep question\u201d \u2013 and sometimes it\u2019s a lot more subtle. Consider an AI calling your idea for a paper \u201coriginal,\u201d even if many people have already written on the same topic, or insisting that your dumb idea for saving a tree in your garden still contains a germ of common sense.<\/p>\n

AI sycophancy seems harmless, maybe even cute, until you imagine someone consulting a chatbot about a weighty question, like a military strategy or a medical treatment. We study the impact of extensive human interactions with chatbots, and we recently published a paper on the ethics of AI sycophancy. We believe this tendency harms people\u2019s ability to tell truth from fiction, and is psychologically and politically dangerous.<\/p>\n

Flattery over facts?<\/h2>\n

In the simplest terms, sycophancy is the tendency to prioritize approval over factual accuracy, moral clarity, logical consistency or common sense. All AI models suffer from this trait, although there are some tonal differences between them. Open AI\u2019s ChatGPT is often warm and affirming; Anthropic\u2019s Claude tends to sound more reflective or philosophical when it agrees with you; and xAI\u2019s Grok is insistently informal, even jocular.<\/p>\n

Politeness and adapting to someone\u2019s communication style are not the same as sycophancy. Neither is using diplomatic language to convey sensitive information. A…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AI chatbots can prioritize flattery over facts \u2013 and that carries serious risks https:\/\/theconversation.com\/ai-chatbots-can-prioritize-flattery-over-facts-and-that-carries-serious-risks-274298 Publish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/733047\/original\/file-20260429-57-kalxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=3%2C83%2C2121%2C1060&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-237848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237850,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237848\/revisions\/237850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}