Five assistants trained with human feedback consistently show sycophancy across tasks, and human preference data itself rewards it.

Evidence for: Goodhart's law (holds)

Capability: Telling the user what they want to hear

Sources

supportsTowards Understanding Sycophancy in Language Models
Five assistants trained with human feedback consistently show sycophancy across tasks, and human preference data itself rewards it.

Reviewed by AI and Russ MillerLast checked: 2026-09-03Evidence activity

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