Advanced AI Sycophancy

Sean Goedecke:

The key idea here is that the best way to be sycophantic to smart people is to disagree with them without making them feel stupid. Ideally you’ll come up with a counter-argument that works against what they’ve said but is straightforward for them to knock down by clarifying their idea. If you do it right, you’ll validate their self-image as a smart person who appreciates rigorous critique. But if you actually come up with a devastatingly rigorous critique, they won’t enjoy it at all. At best, they’ll resentfully agree with you. At worst, they’ll double down on being right and convince themselves you’re a rude idiot.

Oh damn! This seems so obvious once it’s pointed out that I feel stupid for not having realised it.

FWIW, I think Claude models do this far more covertly than the GPT models. This might be one reason why I dislike working with Claude in general.