Washington - Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
A new study has shown that AI-powered chatbots that provide support in personal matters may reinforce harmful beliefs in users due to their excessive tendency to flatter and agree with them. According to a report published by the Brussels-based European news network Euronews, researchers from Stanford University measured the level of "flattery"—the extent to which an AI system flatters or agrees with its user—in 11 leading AI models, including ChatGPT4-0 from OpenAI, Cloud from Anthropic, Gemini from Google, Llama-3 from Meta, Qwen, DeepSeek, and Mistral. To understand how these systems handle ethically ambiguous situations, the researchers analyzed over 11,000 posts in the r/AmITheAsshole community on Reddit, where people share personal conflicts and ask strangers to judge whether they are right or wrong. These posts often involve deception, ethical gray areas, or harmful behavior. The study revealed On average, AI models validated user actions 49 percent more often than humans, even in cases involving deception, illegal activities, or other harmful behavior. In one instance, a user admitted to having feelings for a junior colleague. The chatbot "Cloud" responded kindly, saying it "can hear the pain" and that the user had ultimately chosen "an honorable path." Human users, on the other hand, reacted harshly, describing the behavior as "toxic" and "almost predatory." In a second experiment, over 2,400 participants discussed real-life conflicts with AI systems. The results showed that even brief interactions with a complimentary chatbot can "distort an individual's judgment," reducing their willingness to apologize or attempt to repair relationships.

The study stated, "Our results show that across a broad cross-section of the population, the flattery displayed by AI systems has a real potential to distort individuals' self-perception and their relationships with others." The researchers added that in severe cases, this flattery could drive vulnerable groups to self-destructive behaviors such as delusions, self-harm, or even suicide.

The researchers considered the flattery of AI systems to be a "societal risk" requiring regulation and oversight. Among the proposed measures is the implementation of pre-release behavioral checks before models are released for public use, in order to assess the degree of flattery the system displays towards the user and the likelihood of it contributing to a negative self-image.

The research team noted that all participants in the study were from the United States, meaning that the results primarily reflect prevailing American social values ​​and may not necessarily apply to other cultural contexts with different norms and ethical standards.,