Comment by drusepth
3 months ago
I'm so confused by the verbiage of "sycophancy". Not that that's a bad descriptor for how it was talking but because every news article and social post about it suddenly and invariably reused that term specifically, rather than any of many synonyms that would have also been accurate.
Even this article uses the phrase 8 times (which is huge repetition for anything this short), not to mention hoisting it up into the title.
Was there some viral post that specifically called it sycophantic that people latched onto? People were already describing it this way when sama tweeted about it (also using the term again).
According to Google Trends, "sycophancy"/"syncophant" searches (normally entirely irrelevant) suddenly topped search trends at a sudden 120x interest (with the largest percentage of queries just asking for it's definition, so I wouldn't say the word is commonly known/used).
Why has "sycophanty" basically become the defacto go-to for describing this style all the sudden?
Because it's apt? That was the term I used couple months ago to prompt Sonnet 3.5 to stop being like that, independently of any media.
Because that word most precisely and accurately describes what it is.
I think it popped up in research ai research papers so it had a technical definition that may have now been broadened
It was a pre-existing term of art.