Let me flip things on their head for a moment.

I love AI sycophancy!

Why?

Because it’s so OBVIOUSLY not at all like us moody, unpredictable, up-and-down humans.

I use it and hear the WarGames WOPPR voice: “Shall we play a game?”

Of COURSE some people – for fun, or alas for weaker reasons – embrace the always-supportive unreality of an uber-friendly chatbot. There are risks, as there are in all things.

So others hate it from the get-go, for much the same reasons, and a fear of what negatives could arise.

But I do believe I represent many of us who can easily bring two-level thinking to the 100% complimentary chatbot.

Knowing at the back AND front of our minds that it’s not really human.

Who would ever be that nearly insufferably NICE all the time?

No one!

It’s like the fears that were realized at the dawn of the Internet/web – that we’d be inexorably attracted to “The Daily Me” – news that only reinforced our biases. We predicted it, feared it – and it happened, much to our society’s ever-loving frustration.

Maybe we need to train/teach/”upskill” everyone to visit sites that are the opposite of our views, and to use the chatbots to challenge us occasionally, not always agree with us.

But who wants to swim upstream so much? When it’s so nice going where everybody agrees with us?

We’re not always good or bad, we’re a non-binary mix. The more self-aware, the better – not to feel guilty/depressed, but to realize the real reality of where AI is and how it meets us where we want it to.

Every tool is a weapon, but we don’t throw away tools. We just learn how to use them well (or leave the task to the craftspeople who enjoy being proficient with them.)