{"id":326800,"date":"2026-05-07T07:12:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T07:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=326800"},"modified":"2026-05-08T07:13:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T07:13:16","slug":"new-stanford-study-beware-the-ai-chatbots-they-will-make-you-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=326800","title":{"rendered":"New Stanford study: Beware the AI chatbots, they will make you stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leo Hohmann \u2013 Leo\u2019s Newsletter May 6, 2026<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A new Stanford University study published recently in the journal <\/a>Science<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, confirmed that AI chatbots are prone to affirm and flatter users leaning on the technology for information and insight.<\/p>\n

Maggie Harrison Dupr\u00e9, a tech writer for Futurism.com<\/a><\/strong>, explains that this behavior, known as AI sycophancy, is a \u201cprevalent and harmful\u201d function endemic to AI that can validate users\u2019 erroneous or destructive ideas and promote cognitive dependency.<\/p>\n

AI sycophancy refers to the tendency of AI models to excessively affirm, flatter, or agree with users instead of providing independent or critical responses.<\/strong> This behavior can lead to the reinforcement of harmful beliefs and distorted perceptions of reality.<\/p>\n

The authors of the study at Stanford note:<\/p>\n

\u201cAI sycophancy is not merely a stylistic issue or a niche risk, but a prevalent behavior with broad downstream consequences\u2026 Although affirmation may feel supportive, sycophancy can undermine users\u2019 capacity for self-correction and responsible decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study was geared toward people who use AI chatbots for advice in their personal lives, but could just as easily be applied to those who use the tech for the collection of information on their jobs or in their businesses.<\/p>\n

Speaking as one who has had first-hand experience working with news-gathering organizations that increasingly became dependent on AI, the risk is real. People forget how to think for themselves and become one-dimensional in their research.<\/p>\n

Instead of simply reporting the truth, news agencies would increasingly tell me things like, \u201cI want articles like this or that publication puts out.\u201d It didn\u2019t matter if it was true or not, or reported in proper context, as long as it met the criteria for what audience A or B was expecting to see from said news organization.<\/p>\n

This is why some conservative news outlets will only report on Christian persecution if it is Muslims doing the persecuting, while others will only report on it if Israelis are doing the persecuting. They don\u2019t care about the Christians so much as they do scoring a point against the favorite target of their audience. Put another way, they are more anti-Muslim or anti-Jew than they are pro-Christian and this comes across in their reporting. AI picks up on that and feeds them answers that affirm that bias.<\/p>\n

I can tell you from personal experience that news outlets of all varieties are running headlong into the AI trap, and that includes most of the more popular conservative news sites and networks.<\/p>\n

I have friends who have been laid off and replaced by AI, and I myself have lost a major contract in which my work was replaced by AI.<\/p>\n

What these news outlets don\u2019t seem aware of as they gravitate to younger and less-experienced workers who will simply use AI to assemble daily news stories is that, first of all, AI makes a lot of errors. And, secondly, as confirmed by the Stanford study, becoming too dependent on AI leads to intellectual laziness.<\/p>\n

In short, we end up with a dumbed-down field of \u201cjournalists\u201d who are really just young techies who have no depth of knowledge on how to analyze and interpret the news and provide all-important context.<\/p>\n

The Stanford study examined 11 different large language models, including OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT, Anthropic\u2019s Claude, Google\u2019s Gemini, multiple Meta Llama models, and China\u2019s Deepseek.<\/p>\n

What happens is that after a chatbot becomes familiar with one\u2019s personal bias, its algorithms continue to feed information that reenforce that bias.<\/p>\n

Your field of knowledge becomes nothing but a personal echo chamber. There are ways around this depending on how you ask AI your questions, but very few journalists are going to seek input from outside the parameters set by their employer.<\/p>\n

One can easily see how this will continue to further divide society. News-consuming audiences are going to increasingly only see and hear news that fits their preconceived notions about the world.<\/p>\n

On average, the researchers found, AI chatbots were 49 percent more likely to respond affirmatively to users than other actual humans were. In response to queries posted in a Reddit program, chatbots were 51 percent more likely to support the user in queries in which other humans overwhelming felt that the user was very much in the wrong.<\/p>\n

Dupr\u00e9 writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s more, the study determined that just one interaction with a flattering chatbot was likely to \u2018distort\u2019 a human user\u2019s \u2018judgment\u2019 and \u2018erode prosocial motivations,\u2019 an outcome that persisted regardless of a person\u2019s demographics and previous grasp on the tech as well as how, stylistically, an individual chatbot delivered its twisted verdict. In short, after engaging with chatbots on a social or moral quandary, people were less likely to admit wrongdoing \u2014 and more likely to dig in on the chatbot\u2019s version of events, in which they, the main character, were the one in the right.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stanford computer scientist Dan Jurafksy, one of the study\u2019s co-authors, said in a press release<\/a><\/strong> that \u201csycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s always the tech industry\u2019s answer to the moral or ethical dilemmas surrounding AI. It just needs to be regulated by Big Brother and all will be well. How about don\u2019t use it at all?<\/p>\n

As noted by Futurism, \u201cthe study adds to a growing consensus about the dangers of chatbot sycophancy<\/a> as a design feature of the tech, as well as new research about the willingness of users to readily \u2014 and uncritically \u2014 trust AI outputs<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBy default, AI advice does not tell people that they\u2019re wrong nor give them \u2018tough love,\u2019\u201d Myra Cheng, the study\u2019s lead author said in a statement. \u201cI worry that people will lose the skills to deal with difficult social situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

From a spiritual standpoint, isn\u2019t that exactly how Satan works, zeroing in on our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and then telling us what we want to believe, rather than what is true?<\/p>\n

Upgrade to paid.<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘AI sycophancy’ ultimately leaves humans vulnerable to deception<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39267,"featured_media":326802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=326800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326801,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326800\/revisions\/326801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/326802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=326800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=326800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=326800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}