this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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Cool
The paper clearly is about how a specific form of training on a model causes the outcome.
The article is actively disinformation then, it frames it as a user and not a scientific experiment, and it says it was Facebook llama model, but it wasn't.
It was a further altered model of llama that was further trained to do this
So, as I said, utter garbage journalism.
The actual title should be "Scientific study shows training a model based off user feedback can produce dangerous results"
I don't see how this is much different from the sycophancy "error" OpenAI built into its machine to drive user retention.
If a meth user is looking for reasons to keep using, then a yes-man AI system biased toward agreeing with them will give them reasons.
Honestly, it's much scarier than meth addiction; you could reasonably argue the meth user should pull up their bootstraps and simply refuse to use the sycophantic AI.
But what about flat-earthers? What about Q-Anon? These are not people looking for the treatment of their mental illness, and a sycophantic AI will tell them "You're on the right track. It's freedom fighters like you this country needs. NASA doesn't want people to know about this."