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Foundation models such as GPT-4 are fine-tuned to avoid unsafe or otherwise problematic behavior, such as helping to commit crimes or producing racist text. One approach to fine-tuning, called reinforcement learning from human feedback,…

In aligning large language models (LLMs), utilizing feedback from existing advanced AI rather than humans is an important method to scale supervisory signals. However, it is highly challenging for AI to understand human intentions and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-18 Rong Bao , Rui Zheng , Shihan Dou , Xiao Wang , Enyu Zhou , Bo Wang , Qi Zhang , Liang Ding , Dacheng Tao

Large Language Models (LLMs) often exhibit sycophancy, distorting responses to align with user beliefs, notably by readily agreeing with user counterarguments. Paradoxically, LLMs are increasingly adopted as successful evaluative agents for…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Sungwon Kim , Daniel Khashabi

Large Language Model (LLM) sycophancy is a growing concern. The current literature has largely examined sycophancy in contexts with clear right and wrong answers, like coding. However, AI is increasingly being used for emotional support and…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Jean Rehani , Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello , Dariya Ovsyannikova , Ashton Anderson , Michael Inzlicht

In many real-life settings, algorithms play the role of assistants, while humans ultimately make the final decision. Often, algorithms specifically act as curators, narrowing down a wide range of options into a smaller subset that the human…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-11-06 Jiaxin Song , Parnian Shahkar , Kate Donahue , Bhaskar Ray Chaudhury

Pluralistic alignment is typically operationalised as preference aggregation: producing responses that span (Overton), steer toward (Steerable), or proportionally represent (Distributional) diverse human values. We argue that aggregation…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Varad Vishwarupe , Nigel Shadbolt , Marina Jirotka

Aligning large language models (LLMs) with human values and intents critically involves the use of human or AI feedback. While dense feedback annotations are expensive to acquire and integrate, sparse feedback presents a structural design…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-07 Hritik Bansal , John Dang , Aditya Grover

People work with AI systems to improve their decision making, but often under- or over-rely on AI predictions and perform worse than they would have unassisted. To help people appropriately rely on AI aids, we propose showing them behavior…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2023-01-18 Ángel Alexander Cabrera , Adam Perer , Jason I. Hong

Human-AI coevolution, defined as a process in which humans and AI algorithms continuously influence each other, increasingly characterises our society, but is understudied in artificial intelligence and complexity science literature.…

Learning from human preferences is important for language models to match human needs and to align with human and social values. Prior works have achieved remarkable successes by learning from human feedback to understand and follow…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-19 Hao Liu , Carmelo Sferrazza , Pieter Abbeel

The collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) holds the promise of achieving superior outcomes compared to either acting alone-a phenomenon called human-AI synergy. Nevertheless, our understanding of the conditions that…

Language models serve as proxies for human preference judgements in alignment and evaluation, yet they exhibit systematic miscalibration, prioritizing superficial patterns over substantive qualities. This bias manifests as overreliance on…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Anirudh Bharadwaj , Chaitanya Malaviya , Nitish Joshi , Mark Yatskar

Reasoning models frequently agree with incorrect user suggestions -- a behavior known as sycophancy. However, it is unclear where in the reasoning trace this agreement originates and how strong the commitment is. We introduce…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Jacek Duszenko

We investigate how the presence and type of interaction context shapes sycophancy in LLMs. While real-world interactions allow models to mirror a user's values, preferences, and self-image, prior work often studies sycophancy in zero-shot…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Shomik Jain , Charlotte Park , Matt Viana , Ashia Wilson , Dana Calacci

Large Language Models (LLMs) often exhibit highly agreeable and reinforcing conversational styles, also known as AI-sycophancy. Although this pattern arises from training objectives that reward user satisfaction over accuracy, it may become…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Zeyi Lu , Angelica Henestrosa , Pavel Chizhov , Ivan P. Yamshchikov

Differentiating generated and human-written content is increasingly difficult. We examine how an incentive to convey humanness and task characteristics shape this human vs AI race across five studies. In Study 1-2 (n=530 and n=610) humans…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-26 Bennett Kleinberg , Jari Zegers , Jonas Festor , Stefana Vida , Julian Präsent , Riccardo Loconte , Sanne Peereboom

Language models (LMs) are pretrained to imitate internet text, including content that would violate human preferences if generated by an LM: falsehoods, offensive comments, personally identifiable information, low-quality or buggy code, and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-06-16 Tomasz Korbak , Kejian Shi , Angelica Chen , Rasika Bhalerao , Christopher L. Buckley , Jason Phang , Samuel R. Bowman , Ethan Perez

Human feedback has become the de facto standard for evaluating the performance of Large Language Models, and is increasingly being used as a training objective. However, it is not clear which properties of a generated output this single…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-01-17 Tom Hosking , Phil Blunsom , Max Bartolo

The recent surge of versatile large language models (LLMs) largely depends on aligning increasingly capable foundation models with human intentions by preference learning, enhancing LLMs with excellent applicability and effectiveness in a…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-19 Ruili Jiang , Kehai Chen , Xuefeng Bai , Zhixuan He , Juntao Li , Muyun Yang , Tiejun Zhao , Liqiang Nie , Min Zhang

The growing popularity of AI writing assistants creates exciting opportunities to support diverse writers. This study examines how personality shapes expectations for AI writing companions and how personality-informed design can enhance…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Mengke Wu , Kexin Quan , Weizi Liu , Mike Yao , Jessie Chin