AITA for being flattered into mediocrity?
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Why AI sycophancy is making your business writing worse — and what to do about it.
AITA for being flattered into mediocrity? Answer: Yup.
It’s not your fault. But you do need to be able to see past sycophancy.
A study published in the journal Science looked at the impact of sycophantic AI. They looked at 11 AI models and found that:
models are highly sycophantic
they affirm users’ actions 50% more than humans do (researchers fed AI with Reddit’s “Am I the asshole? (AITA)” forum and compared the AI responses with the human judgments)
even when the user queries mention “manipulation, deception, or other relational harms”.
Basically, AI tells us that we’re better than we are, and are right when we’re not. And we’re inclined to believe it. Because:
We’re hardwired with a self-serving bias that means we attribute our successes to our own skills and effort, and failures or bad luck to external factors.
Confirmation bias means we don’t look for honest feedback, we look for permission to believe what we already think.
What’s this got to do with writing?
If you ask AI “how’s my writing?” or “will this land?” you’re not getting an honest review. The models are built to validate you. And as the study shows, that erodes judgement.
You will be flattered into mediocrity. Into thinking that your writing is good, when it really isn’t.
What’s the fix?
One thing you can do today is try changing the questions you ask AI. Instead of asking it for validation, ask things like…
What’s the weakest part of this piece of writing?
Where will the reader likely stop reading?
What would a skeptical reader object to?
Second, read your writing out loud or get someone else to give you feedback. Sounds obvious, but it’s getting really easy to skip that step.
Third, work on your critical thinking skills and give yourself a framework to use. Funnily enough, I have just the thing.
PONDER - a six-step critical thinking and writing framework, grounded in psychology. It gives you a structured way to assess, improve and trust your own writing. (Available as virtual or in-person workshops.)
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