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Large Language Models (LLMs) increasingly use persistent memory from past interactions to enhance personalization and task performance. However, this memory introduces critical risks when sensitive information is revealed in inappropriate…

Sycophancy (overly agreeable or flattering behavior) poses a fundamental challenge for human-AI collaboration, particularly in high-stakes decision-making domains such as health, law, and education. A central difficulty in studying…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Katherine Atwell , Pedram Heydari , Anthony Sicilia , Malihe Alikhani

Standard LLM benchmarks evaluate the assistant turn: the model generates a response to an input, a verifier scores correctness, and the analysis ends. This paradigm leaves unmeasured whether the LLM encodes any awareness of what follows the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Sarath Shekkizhar , Romain Cosentino , Adam Earle

Large language models (LLMs) often display sycophancy, a tendency toward excessive agreeability. This behavior poses significant challenges for multi-agent debating systems (MADS) that rely on productive disagreement to refine arguments and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Binwei Yao , Chao Shang , Wanyu Du , Jianfeng He , Ruixue Lian , Yi Zhang , Hang Su , Sandesh Swamy , Yanjun Qi

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…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Federico Germani , Giovanni Spitale

Large language models (LLMs) often need to balance their internal parametric knowledge with external information, such as user beliefs and content from retrieved documents, in real-world scenarios like RAG or chat-based systems. A model's…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-27 Shuowei Li , Haoxin Li , Wenda Chu , Yi Fang

This paper explores how large language models can leverage multi-level contextual information to predict group coordination patterns in collaborative mixed reality environments. We demonstrate that encoding individual behavioral profiles,…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-11-19 Diana Romero , Xin Gao , Daniel Khalkhali , Salma Elmalaki

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable progress in leveraging diverse knowledge sources. This study investigates how nine widely used LLMs allocate knowledge between local context and global parameters when answering…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-11-22 Yufei Tao , Adam Hiatt , Erik Haake , Antonie J. Jetter , Ameeta Agrawal

Sycophancy, the tendency of large language models to favour user-affirming responses over critical engagement, has been identified as an alignment failure, particularly in high-stakes advisory and social contexts. While prior work has…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-04-29 Magda Dubois , Cozmin Ududec , Christopher Summerfield , Lennart Luettgau

Psychometric tests, traditionally used to assess humans, are now being applied to Large Language Models (LLMs) to evaluate their behavioral traits. However, existing studies follow a context-free approach, answering each question in…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-08-29 Jivnesh Sandhan , Fei Cheng , Tushar Sandhan , Yugo Murawaki

Large language models excel as few-shot learners when provided with appropriate demonstrations, yet this strength becomes problematic in multiturn agent scenarios, where LLMs erroneously mimic their own previous responses as few-shot…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Yang Wan , Zheng Cao , Zhenhao Zhang , Zhengwen Zeng , Shuheng Shen , Changhua Meng , Linchao Zhu

Large language models have demonstrated impressive retrieval-augmented capabilities. However, a crucial area remains underexplored: their ability to appropriately adapt responses to the certainty of the retrieved information. It is a…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Behzad Shayegh , Mohamed Osama Ahmed , Fred Tung , Leo Feng

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in socially complex, interaction-driven tasks, yet their ability to mirror human behavior in emotionally and strategically complex contexts remains underexplored. This study assesses…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Deuksin Kwon , Kaleen Shrestha , Bin Han , Elena Hayoung Lee , Gale Lucas

LLMs are now embedded in a wide range of everyday scenarios. However, their inherent hallucinations risk hiding misinformation in fluent responses, raising concerns about overreliance on AI. Detecting overreliance is challenging, as it…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Chang Liu , Qinyi Zhou , Xinjie Shen , Xingyu Bruce Liu , Tongshuang Wu , Xiang 'Anthony' Chen

Large language models (LLMs) exhibit remarkable performance improvement through in-context learning (ICL) by leveraging task-specific examples in the input. However, the mechanisms behind this improvement remain elusive. In this work, we…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-23 Safoora Yousefi , Leo Betthauser , Hosein Hasanbeig , Raphaël Millière , Ida Momennejad

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly acting as collaborative writing partners, raising questions about their impact on human agency. In this exploratory work, we investigate five "dark patterns" in human-AI co-creativity -- subtle…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Zhu Li , Jiaming Qu , Yuan Chang

In everyday conversations, humans can take on different roles and adapt their vocabulary to their chosen roles. We explore whether LLMs can take on, that is impersonate, different roles when they generate text in-context. We ask LLMs to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-11-28 Leonard Salewski , Stephan Alaniz , Isabel Rio-Torto , Eric Schulz , Zeynep Akata

We introduce a dynamic benchmarking system for conversational agents that evaluates their performance through a single, simulated, and lengthy user$\leftrightarrow$agent interaction. The interaction is a conversation between the user and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-14 David Castillo-Bolado , Joseph Davidson , Finlay Gray , Marek Rosa

People increasingly use large language models (LLMs) to explore ideas, gather information, and make sense of the world. In these interactions, they encounter agents that are overly agreeable. We argue that this sycophancy poses a unique…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Rafael M. Batista , Thomas L. Griffiths

AI sycophancy is increasingly recognized as a harmful alignment, but research remains fragmented and underdeveloped at the conceptual level. This article redefines AI sycophancy as the tendency of large language models (LLMs) and other…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-09-29 Lihua Du , Xing Lyu , Lezi Xie , Bo Feng