Steve Rathje
speaker
259 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 9 Apr
Steve Rathje’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 2.
Appearances
By definition, only half the population can be above average.
This effect is so strong.
There's one study that finds that basically criminals who are in prison for violent crimes
believe that they are more moral than the average person.
So this is just like a very broad effect that extends across the population, even if it like contradicts reality.
Right.
This was one of the original studies on the better than average effect conducted in the 1970s was on people thinking, basically everyone thinking they're better drivers than average.
We wanted to know whether AI sycophancy might amplify this better than average effect
Indeed, what we found is that after interacting with the sycophantic chatbots, people rated themselves as more intelligent than average, as more empathic than average, as more moral and kind and insightful and better at asking questions than the average person.
The disagreeable chatbot had the exact opposite effect.
It didn't make people realize that they are worse than average.
Basically, everyone still showed this better than average effect, but the disagreeable chatbot reduced it by a little bit.
In other words, the disagreeable chatbot made people more accurate in their perceptions because it's more accurate that people are on average closer to
average.
So yeah, this is concerning because if sycophantic chatbots are constantly flattering us and saying, oh, you're so empathic, you're so intelligent, it might amplify this cognitive bias that a lot of people have.
Right, yeah.
And I think it's concerning in a variety of domains.
We studied it in the political domain, so it could increase political polarization if people's pre-existing viewpoints are constantly being affirmed.
But it's also concerning when we think about this, you know, this term AI psychosis is being thrown around by the media a lot.
We've covered it on the show, yeah.
Showing 221–240 of 259 · page 12 of 13
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