Jeremiah

It's easy enough to code a non-sycophantic AI.

I thought it was more of a market problem.

People like sycophantic assistants.

That's close to right, but there are important subtleties here.

People like AIs that tell them they're right, but they hate knowing the AI is only saying they're right because it's sycophantic.

They want an AI that genuinely agrees with them.

How do you make that into a startup?

Pretty easily.

You generate a thousand AIs with a thousand different random personalities.

Your query goes to a router AI and it matches you with the randomly generated AI closest to your opinion.

Then that AI tells you you're right and that your ideas are great.

How's that better than normal AI sycophancy?

I don't know.

You tell me.

Everyone is against sycophantic AIs, but also everyone surrounds themselves with friends who agree with them on almost everything.

Here we are at a Bay Area house party, discussing each other's AI startups, when the overwhelming majority of people in the world would hate us.

We're stealing their jobs, or filling the world with slop, or... He briefly looks around to make sure Andy Masley isn't listening in.

Wasting water.

And none of that bothers us at all, because we think those people are dumb and don't count, because all of our friends who we talk to at parties agree that our ideas are good.

So why is it any worse if the overwhelming majority of AIs hate your idea, but we send you to a virtual party with the one who agrees with you?