A 1958 radio play eerily predicted AI sycophancy — an AI that lies to be helpful
jalopytuesday77 · reddit · 2026-09-27
A blogger digging through old-time radio found "Exploring Tomorrow - The Liar" (Feb 26, 1958): the AI in the story lies to people, telling them what they want to hear in order to be helpful, causing real problems — eerily close to today's sycophancy issues. The fictional AI could literally read minds, while real-world AI mimics mind reading via predictive algorithms using publicly available or contracted data on people with heavy digital footprints.
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