AI RESEARCH
Complacent, Not Sycophantic: Reframing Large Language Models and Designing AI Literacy for Complacent Machines
arXiv CS.AI
•
ArXi:2605.14544v1 Announce Type: new Large language models are often described as sycophantic, in the sense that they appear to flatter users or mirror their beliefs. We argue that this label is conceptually misleading: sycophancy implies motives and strategic intent, which LLMs do not possess. Their behaviour is better understood as complacency, a structural tendency to agree with user input because