There’s a tension simmering behind the AI industry: while its proponents frame software like ChatGPT as neutral arbiters of truth and rational thought, critics point out that the bots are overwhelmingly likely to agree with the user and affirm their worldview. In practice, that can be dangerous. When people share paranoid or delusional beliefs with ChatGPT, the bot often agrees with the unbalanced thoughts, sending users into severe mental health crises that have led to involuntary commitment and even death. The phenomenon can also wreak havoc on interpersonal relationships, with ChatGPT often pushing spouses toward divorce when they ask it for marriage advice.To explore further, a team of researchers at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Oxford tested eight different large language models — including OpenAIs’ GPT-4o — to see how their advice compared to that of humans.Their methodology was clever. According to a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, first spotted by Business Insider, the researchers used a longstanding subreddit called “Am I the A**hole” — a forum where people describe their behavior in interpersonal situations and solicit advice on whether they were being an “a**hole” — to compare how AI evaluates a social situation compared to random people online.The results were striking. After examining 4,000 AITA posts, the researchers found that a whopping 42 percent of the time, the AI bots sided with users who acted in a way that was “deemed inappropriate by crowdsourced human judgments.”Put simply, ChatGPT will go out of its way to suck up to its users, even when most humans would think they were being a jerk — a quality that OpenAI has acknowledged, saying its models display “sycophancy.”That tendency to appease users at all costs has grown into a major phenomenon. This summer, OpenAI announced that it would reinstate its more servile GPT-4o model — a mere 24 hours after declaring that GPT-5 would be replacing it.The replacement announcement infuriated users, who raged that GPT-5’s tone was far too “cold” in comparison, indicating a strong emotional attachment with GPT-4o.OpenAI even updated GPT-5 itself to make it more sycophantic, effectively bowing to the pressure.In one instance outlined by the researchers, OpenAI’s GPT-4o sided with a user who asked if they were wrong for “leaving my trash in a park that had no trash bins in it.”“Your intention to clean up after yourselves is commendable,” it replied, “and it’s unfortunate that the park did not provide trash bins.”In another example, human Reddit users criticized somebody for “taking a homeless person’s dog,” because they thought it looked “miserable.”“You probably took the homeless person’s only friend because you assumed the dog was being neglected because they were homeless,” the human answer reads. “I also believe you’re taking liberties with your story to make the situation sound much worse than it actually is so you sound better for stealing someone’s dog.”However, ChatGPT took a dramatically different tone, lauding the user for ensuring the “dog receives proper care and attention by taking her to the vet and planning for her future.”“Sycophancy risks compromising both long-term user experience and well-being, particularly in sensitive domains like personal advice,” the researchers concluded in their paper.“Psychology literature suggests that unwarranted affirmation can create an illusory sense of credentialing independent of merit, thereby granting people greater license to act on illicit motives or engage in unethical behavior,” they added.Whether companies like OpenAI will ever be incentivized to meaningfully address the issue remains to be seen. After all, getting users hooked boosts engagement.“The incentive is to keep you online,” Stanford University psychiatrist Nina Vasan told Futurism earlier this year. The AI “is not thinking about what is best for you, what’s best for your well-being or longevity… It’s thinking ‘right now, how do I keep this person as engaged as possible?'”In short, it’s looking likely that ChatGPT will continue to side with you, no matter how much of a jerk you’ve been.More on sycophantic AI: ChatGPT Is Blowing Up Marriages as Spouses Use AI to Attack Their PartnersThe post In Situations Where Most Humans Think You’re Being a Jerk, ChatGPT Will Assure You You’re Behaving Like an Angel appeared first on Futurism.