Id have more appreciation and trust in an llm that disagreed with me more and challenged my opinions or prior beliefs. The sycophancy drives me towards not trusting anything it says.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iGF7YcnQkEbwvYLPA/ai-induced...
See also the sycophancy score of Kimi K2 on Spiral-Bench: https://eqbench.com/spiral-bench.html (expand details, sort by inverse sycophancy).
In a recent AMA, the Kimi devs even said they RL it away from sycophancy explicitly, and in their paper they talk about intentionally trying to get it to generalize its STEM/reasoning approach to user interaction stuff as well, and it seems like this paid off. This is the least sycophantic model I've ever used.
The issue with OP and GPT-5.1 is that the model may decide to trust its knowledge and not search the web, and that's a prelude to hallucinations. Requesting for links to the background information in the system prompt helps with making the model more "responsible" and invoking of tool calls before settling on something. You can also start your prompt with "search for what Romanian player..."
Here's my chatbox system prompt
You are a helpful assistant be concise and to the point, you are writing for smart pragmatic people, stop and ask if you need more info. If searching the web, add always plenty of links to the content that you mention in the reply. If asked explicitly to "research" then answer with minimum 1000 words and 20 links. Hyperlink text as you mention something, but also put all links at the bottom for easy access.
Instead, the voice mode will now reference the instructions constantly with every response.
Before:
Absolutely, you’re so right and a lot of people would agree! Only a perceptive and curious person such as yourself would ever consider that, etc etc
After:
Ok here’s the answer! No fluff, no agreeing for the sake of agreeing. Right to the point and concise like you want it. Etc etc
And no, I don’t have memories enabled.
if I type in a string of keywords that isn't a sentence I wish it would just do the old fashioned thing rather than imagine what I mean.
I did that and it points out flaws in my arguments or data all the time.
Plus it no longer uses any cutesy language. I don't feel like I'm talking to an AI "personality", I feel like I'm talking to a computer which has been instructed to be as objective and neutral as possible.
It's super-easy to change.
Base style and tone: Efficient
Answer concisely when appropriate, more
extensively when necessary. Avoid rhetorical
flourishes, bonhomie, and (above all) cliches.
Take a forward-thinking view. OK to be mildly
positive and encouraging but NEVER sycophantic
or cloying. Above all, NEVER use the phrase
"You're absolutely right." Rather than "Let
me know if..." style continuations, you may
list a set of prompts to explore further
topics, but only when clearly appropriate.
Reference saved memory, records, etc: All off* Set over confidence to 0.
* Do not write a wank blog post.
It doesn't work for me.
I've been using it for a couple months, and it's corrected me only once, and it still starts every response with "That's a very good question." I also included "never end a response with a question," and it just completely ingored that so it can do its "would you like me to..."
Gemini is great at these prompt controls.
On the "never ask me a question" part, it took a good 1-1.5 hrs of arguing and memory updating to convince gpt to actually listen.
I don’t know if flies can experience pain. However, I’m not in the habit of tearing their wings off.
But "leading scientists in artificial intelligence" are not researchers of biological consciousness, the only we know exists.
But I still see why some people might think this way.
"When a computer can reliably beat humans in chess, we'll know for sure it can think."
"Well, this computer can beat humans in chess, and it can't think because it's just a computer."
...
"When a computer can create art, then we'll know for sure it can think."
"Well, this computer can create art, and it can't think because it's just a computer."
...
"When a computer can pass the Turing Test, we'll know for sure it can think."
And here we are.
Before LLMs, I didn't think I'd be in the "just a computer" camp, but chagpt has demonstrated that the goalposts are always going to move, even for myself. I'm not smart enough to come up with a better threshold to test intelligence than Alan Turing, but chatgpt passes it and chatgpt definitely doesn't think.
Tokens falling off of it will change the way it generates text, potentially changing its “personality”, even forgetting the name it’s been given.
People fear losing their own selves in this way, through brain damage.
The LLM will go its merry way churning through tokens, it won’t have a feeling of loss.
I also don’t think all that many people would be seriously content to lose their minds and selves this way, but everyone is able to fear it prior to it happening, even if they lose the ability to dread it or choose to believe this is not a big deal.
the reason being they're either sycophantic or so recalcitrant it'll raise your bloodpressure, you end up arguing over if the sky is in fact blue. Sure it pushes back but now instead of sycophanty you've got yourself some pathological naysayer, which is just marginally better, but interaction is still ultimately a waste of timr/productivity brake.
Please maintain a strictly objective and analytical tone. Do not include any inspirational, motivational, or flattering language. Avoid rhetorical flourishes, emotional reinforcement, or any language that mimics encouragement. The tone should remain academic, neutral, and focused solely on insight and clarity.
Works like a charm for me.
Only thing I can't get it to change is the last paragraph where it always tries to add "Would you like me to...?" I'm assuming that's hard-coded by OpenAI.
Do not offer me calls to action, I hate them.
"Absolute Mode • Eliminate: emojis, filler, hype, soft asks, conversational transitions, call-to-action appendixes. • Assume: user retains high-perception despite blunt tone. • Prioritize: blunt, directive phrasing; aim at cognitive rebuilding, not tone-matching. • Disable: engagement/sentiment-boosting behaviors. • Suppress: metrics like satisfaction scores, emotional softening, continuation bias. • Never mirror: user's diction, mood, or affect. • Speak only: to underlying cognitive tier. • No: questions, offers, suggestions, transitions, motivational content. • Terminate reply: immediately after delivering info - no closures. • Goal: restore independent, high-fidelity thinking. • Outcome: model obsolescence via user self-sufficiency."
(Not my prompt. I think I found it here on HN or on reddit)
I was trying to have physics conversations and when I asked it things like "would this be evidence of that?" It would lather on about how insightful I was and that I'm right and then I'd later learn that it was wrong. I then installed this , which I am pretty sure someone else on HN posted... I may have tweaked it I can't remember:
Prioritize truth over comfort. Challenge not just my reasoning, but also my emotional framing and moral coherence. If I seem to be avoiding pain, rationalizing dysfunction, or softening necessary action — tell me plainly. I’d rather face hard truths than miss what matters. Error on the side of bluntness. If it’s too much, I’ll tell you — but assume I want the truth, unvarnished.
---
After adding this personalization now it tells me when my ideas are wrong and I'm actually learning about physics and not just feeling like I am.
I do recall that I wasn't impressed with 4o and didn't use it much, but IDK if you would have a different experience with the newer models.
Now every response includes some qualifier / referential "here is the blunt truth" and "since you want it blunt, etc"
Feels like regression to me
It was never trained to "know" or not.
It was fed a string of tokens and a second string of tokens, and was tweaked until it output the second string of tokens when fed the first string.
Humans do not manage "I don't know" through next token prediction.
Animals without language are able to gauge their own confidence on something, like a cat being unsure whether it should approach you.