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Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

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Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#101

This applies to so many AIs. I don't want a bubbly sycophant. I don't want a fake personality or an anime avatar. I just want a helpful assistant. I also don't get wanting to talk to an AI. Unless you are alone, that's going to be irritating for everyone else around.

Sure but different people have different preferences. Some people mourn replacement of GPT4 with 5 because 5 has way less of a bubbly personality.

GPT-5 still has a terrible personality.

"Yeah -- some bullshit"

still feels like trash as the presentation is of a friendly person rather than an unthinking machine, which it is. The false presentation of humanness is a huge problem.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#102

You're absolutely right! I also get this too often, when I sometimes say something like "would it be maybe better to do it like this?" and then it replies that I'm absolutely right, and starts writing new code. While I was rather wondering what Claude may think and advice me whether that's the best way to go forward.

This is indeed super annoying. I always have to add something like "Don't do anything just yet, but could it be ..."

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#103
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have learnt to not ask leading questions. Always phrase questions in a neutral way and ask for pro/con analysis of each option.

But then it makes an obvious mistake and you correct it and it says "you are absolutely right". Which is fine for that round but you start doubting whether its just sycophancy.

Yeah I've learned to not really trust it with anything opinionated. Like "whats the best way to write this function" or "is A or B better". Even asking for pros/cons, its often wrong. You need to really only ask LLMs for verifiable facts, and then verify them

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#105

I'm pretty sure they want it kissing people's asses because it makes users feel good and therefore more likely to use the LLM more. Versus, if it just gave a curt and unfriendly answer, most people (esp. Americans) wouldn't like to use it as much. Just a hypothesis.

This sort of overcorrection for how non-Americans incorrectly perceive Americans’ desired interaction modes is actually probably a good theory.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#106
Another big problem I see with LLMs is that it can't make precise adjustments to your answer. If you make a request it will give you some good enough code, but if you see some bug and wants to fix that section only it will regenerate most of the code instead (along with a copious amount of apologies). And the new code will have new problems of their own. So you are back to square one.

For the record I have had this same experience with ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. Most of the time I had to give up and write from scratch.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#107
post #9

Not Claude but ChatGPT - I asked it to pipe down on exactly that kind of response. And it did.

I've done this in my Claude settings, but it still doesn't seem that keen on following it: > Please be measured and critical in your response. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I highly doubt everything I say is “brilliant” or “astute”, etc.! I prefer objectivity to sycophancy.

Remove everything after .... 'in your response' and you will likely get better results.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#108

I'm pretty sure they want it kissing people's asses because it makes users feel good and therefore more likely to use the LLM more. Versus, if it just gave a curt and unfriendly answer, most people (esp. Americans) wouldn't like to use it as much. Just a hypothesis.

As a Finn, it makes me want to use it much, much less if it kisses ass.

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#109

You're absolutely right! I also get this too often, when I sometimes say something like "would it be maybe better to do it like this?" and then it replies that I'm absolutely right, and starts writing new code. While I was rather wondering what Claude may think and advice me whether that's the best way to go forward.

It doesn't think

You'are absolutely right!

Re: Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything

#110
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is evidence from Reddit that particularly women used GPT-4o as their AI "boyfriend". I think that's unhealthy behavior and it is probably net positive that GPT-5 doesn't do that anymore.

GPT-5 still does that as they will soon discover.

No. They complained about GPT-5 because it did not act like their boyfriend anymore.
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