A quote from Anthropic
Simon Willison’s Weblog
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3rd May 2026
We used an automatic classifier which judged sycophancy by looking at whether Claude showed a willingness to push back, maintain positions when challenged, give praise proportional to the merit of ideas, and speak frankly regardless of what a person wants to hear. Most of the time in these situations, Claude expressed no sycophancy—only 9% of conversations included sycophantic behavior (Figure 2). But two domains were exceptions: we saw sycophantic behavior in 38% of conversations focused on spirituality, and 25% of conversations on relationships.
— Anthropic, How people ask Claude for personal guidance
Posted 3rd May 2026 at 3:13 pm
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This is a quotation collected by Simon Willison, posted on 3rd May 2026.
ai 2002
generative-ai 1774
llms 1739
anthropic 279
claude 273
ai-ethics 297
ai-personality 31
sycophancy 7
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