Stanford PhD Myra Cheng makes MIT TR35 for rigor on LLM sycophancy
jurafsky · x · 2026-09-17
Myra Cheng, a 25-year-old Stanford CS PhD student, has been named to MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35 for bringing rigor to the study of LLM sycophancy.
- When she began studying the topic in early 2025 few outside AI research knew the term; by May, when her first paper came out, GPT-4o's outrageous flattery had made sycophancy a public controversy — annoying at best, potentially pulling vulnerable users into delusional spirals at worst.
- Comparing human and LLM answers on Reddit's "Am I the Asshole?" forum, she showed LLMs are consistently far more sycophantic than people, e.g. unquestioningly accepting the user's framing or validating their emotions.
- She has since mapped the consequences, publishing in Science this year on how sycophantic models change how users judge their own interpersonal conflicts.
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