Annoyed ChatGPT users complain about bot’s relentlessly positive tone

Users complain of new "sycophancy" streak where ChatGPT thinks everything is brilliant.

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[jdale]

Carro's paper suggests that obvious sycophancy significantly reduces user trust. In experiments where participants used either a standard model or one designed to be more sycophantic, "participants exposed to sycophantic behavior reported and exhibited lower levels of trust."

Sounds like a good thing to me. People have too much trust in these systems, I'll all for undermining that.

 

[jdale]

I for one appreciate the politeness. It’s better than being criticized by some condescending human for asking a stupid question, amirite?

Empty obsequiousness isn't polite. It's how you talk to dogs and babies. It is, in fact, extremely condescending when used on adults.

 

[jdale]

I get annoyed by LLMs asking me questions. I mainly use Copilot on my PC when I need a quick answer to a question that I know I won't find immediately via traditional search. Copilot's default behavior these days is to always ask what I think about that topic/if I have experience with it/if I've ever been on vacation there/...

I just want to be efficient, I don't want to have in-depth conversations with my computer.

Are you sure you are using Copilot and not Eliza?