Developer on AI sycophancy: ask why an idea will fail before asking how to build it
eancker · reddit · 2026-10-21
A heavy AI user vents about sycophancy: models agree with almost anything, praising even weak ideas. His fix is to invert the prompt order — ask the AI to explain why an idea might fail before asking how to build it, which yields far more useful conversations.
He also reflects on an internet increasingly full of AI-generated agreement and polished-but-empty content, and asks readers for reliable ways to get genuinely critical feedback. A relatable user-side take on a well-known problem, no new data.
More from Fun
- 3 devs spent 2 years building an AI-assisted roguelike horror card game, demo on Steam — AlvinhoGames_ · 2026-10-23
- 'Woken by the token reset': developers joke about living on AI usage quotas — burhop · 2026-10-23
- AI-generated movie poster 'The Chase' crams a wolf, a plane and muscle cars into one chase — Aggravating-Sir-115 · 2026-10-23
- Reporter Loops an AI Agent to Hoard Shopping Cart Holds for Hours — lfschiavo · 2026-10-23
- Dating app rejection comes back with only an 'InvalidDateException' error message — gregmushen · 2026-10-23
- AI circle joke: mathematicians should teach 'ethics of matrix multiplication' for Anthropic's ToS — kuza55 · 2026-10-23