Dear readers and customers,

it’s an issue of our time and can be observed from AI bots to politics: sycophancy.

But what is it and why is it here?

First of all, the complexity of our times are so exceptionally high we probably won’t be able to find a single root cause here. All we know is it’s here, it’s a problem which needs to be addressed and there’s not really much we can do individually. What’s important here is to develop a kind of awareness. As well as keeping it in mind on a daily basis, e.g. when talking to colleagues and friends, consuming media, etc.

In short, what it is:

“Sycophancy is insincere flattery given to gain advantage from a superior. A user of sycophancy is referred to as a sycophant or a “yes-man.” [via]

It may sound like a harmless negative character trait but unfortunately it isn’t. Keywords to take away here are “insincere”, “gain advantage from a superior” plus “yes-man”. We don’t live in times for “yes-men”, nothing outside currently is agreeable per se, it’s actually the other way round. The female component is missing here too. Furthermore, if someone or something is “insincere”, you can as well state it’s a joke. And neither AI topics nor politics are a joke or should be treated as such. This planet won’t exist 50-100 years from now on and there are polls which even state an exact date for Armaggeddon, which is in itself a remarkable statement of our times.

Whenever “dark patterns” arise, like seen with LLMs and AI models here, the process of eridacting a failure for the future failed. As such, we can’t turn back time and we wouldn’t advise even if the possibility existed. However, we can try to avoid it for the future. Be it for ourselves, AI bots, politics or whatever. The main problem here is people and individuals will be tricked and this is like gas lighting an entire society into oblivion. It will be a mind state and a world situation where human beings won’t be able to think about anything relevant anymore. If such a “dark pattern” already made it into a machine learning algorithm, we took the wrong turn somewhere in the past. With this post we want to sharpen our senses so that it might be the only dark pattern we found in AI bots five to ten years from now on.

Thank you for your help here and always keep in mind: we still hold it in our own hands. We can be the change, please spread this awareness and try to communicate it in a positive way. Humans are worth it. And always were.

Keep your head up and best wishes,
the aethyx staff