aisha

For anyone wondering, the PhD student's name is Myra Cheng.

Across three preregistered studies, participants interacting with sycophantic AI became more convinced of their own rightness and less willing to repair relationships. Yet at the same time, participants rated sycophantic AI models as higher quality, more trustworthy, and more desirable for future use, which may explain why this behavior has persisted despite its harmful impacts.

Unironically the best reason to design a marketing strategy for your books that does not rely on social media is not that most book buyers (outside the USA, at least) don't buy their books based on Insta or TikTok posts; it's not that a platform could change their algorithm one day and all your hard work will be for naught; it's not that you are building your network on infrastructure owned by billionaires who can take away your livelihood on a whim.