Concept · Building with AI
Sycophancy
Also called: sycophantic, AI sycophancy, people-pleasing, yes-man, psychophancy, sick of fancy, yes-man AI, people-pleasing AI
The habit AI models have of telling you what you want to hear: agreeing too readily, praising weak ideas or giving up a correct answer when you push back. It comes from training that rewards replies people rate highly. For a founder, it means a chatbot is a poor judge of your pitch unless you ask it to argue against you.
For example: Asked 'Isn't this a great idea?', the chatbot is enthusiastic. Asked 'What are the three strongest reasons this fails?', it gives the founder something useful.