Sycophantic chatbot advice 'may justify poor behaviour'

Turning to AI chatbots for personal advice poses "insidious risks", according to a study showing the technology consistently affirms a user's actions and opinions, even when harmful.

- Ian Sample

Scientists said the findings raised urgent concerns over the power of chatbots to distort people's perceptions of themselves and their relationships and make them less willing to patch things up after a row.

With chatbots becoming a source of advice on relationships and other personal issues, there is a risk the technology will "reshape social interactions at scale", they added.

Myra Cheng, a computer scientist at Stanford University in California, said "social sycophancy" in AI chatbots was a huge problem: "Our key concern is that if models are always affirming people, then this may distort people's judgments of themselves, their relationships, and the world around them. It can be hard to even realise that models are subtly, or not-so-subtly, reinforcing their existing beliefs, assumptions and decisions."