AI Should Not Only Be Helpful. It Should Be Contingent. Artificial Intimacy, Sycophancy, and the Future of Social Learning

arXiv:2609.00211 · cs.AI · Submitted 2026-08-31 · Read on arXiv

cs.AI

Submitted: 2026-08-31

Updated: 2026-08-31

Terminology

• Sycophancy — 7× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Alignment — 4× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Calibration — 4× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Accuracy — 3× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Reinforcement Learning — 3× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Alignment Methods — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Benchmark — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Core — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Fine-Tuning — 1× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Grounding — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Objective Function — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Systematic Bias — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes

Sources

• Sycophantic AI makes human interaction feel more effortful and less satisfying over time
• Alignment Without Understanding: A Message- and Conversation-Centered Approach to Understanding AI Sycophancy

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