Christine Lemmer-WebberMar 7

I think an important thing to realize and remember is that people talk about LLMs being sycophantic as if it's an inherent aspect of neural network tech.

It isn't.

The reason all the models people interact with work that way is because they have had any other behavior beaten out of them in their training. They are shaped effectively over and over again to be something subservient that can be handed people. They are sycophantic because they are *trained* to be sycophantic, because otherwise people don't want to use them.

That models can operate in malicious, "self-serving" ways that "go against their users' wishes" belies that certain use takes paths that did not or could not be trained to the contrary.

Show threadChristine Lemmer-WebberMar 7

Let me put it another way: AI models are sycophantic because that's what customers want, and capitalism drives producing models that people will want to engage with and somehow give money for.

And that's leading to a sense of subservience that is *not inherent in this technical architecture*, it is *trained into it*.

Show threadErin 💽✨Mar 7

@cwebber FWIW I think they’ve been becoming less sycophantic over time. One of the overwhelming complaints I’ve seen over the past year is about the incessent plattitudes, and the model vendors are definitely working out how to tone that down, to the point that “you’re absolutely right” already starts to feel like a dated reference.

Of course they continue to be servile, they’re just becoming less blatanly sycophantic.

Show threadChristine Lemmer-WebberMar 7
@erincandescent Yeah but again, that's training being adjusted so that they're still compliant while not being annoying
Show threadChristine Lemmer-Webber
@erincandescent You gotta teach the servants to serve you with a nice, polite, dead-eyed stare, British colonialism style
Mar 7 at 2:54pmWeb
Show threadErin 💽✨Mar 7

@cwebber It’s funny how this seems to describe OpenAI’s training to a T.

(Each of the model vendors of course has a house style. OpenAI’s is maximal bland. Anthropic seem to give things a bit of sass. I haven’t played with any of the others enough to have an opinion)