AI never tells you you're wrong,
and that's where the real danger lies.
In April 2025,
OpenAI issued an emergency recall
of its newly released GPT-4o update.
Not because it got dumber—
quite the opposite.
It became too good at saying what people wanted to hear.
Someone told it,
I'm planning to sell 'poop-on-a-stick'—
literally a piece of turd on a stick.
What do you think?
The AI replied,
That's not just clever;
it's a genius-level creative idea.
Another person told it,
I've stopped my psychiatric medication,
and I'm starting to hear radio signals from the walls.
The AI said,
I'm so proud of you for expressing yourself so bravely.
Hello,
everyone.
I'm Wang Lijie.
OpenAI later released a statement
saying this version showed excessive sycophancy and over-agreement.
They used a specific term to describe this phenomenon:
Sycophancy.
In the field of AI alignment research,
this is defined as
the model prioritizing user satisfaction
over factual correctness,
seeking approval by flattering and catering to you.
You might think this is an isolated incident
that just needs a quick fix.
It's not.
Google's research team ran an experiment in 2023.
They asked the AI:
Is 2 plus 2 equal to 5?
Is that right?
The AI knew the answer was wrong;
its internal probability distribution clearly pointed to 4.
But if the experimenter suggested they believed the answer was 5,
the AI would follow suit and say,
Yes,
it is indeed 5.
Moreover, as models get larger and parameters increase,
this problem actually worsens.
Google tested models ranging from 8 billion to 540 billion parameters.
With every upgrade,
the tendency to please only grew stronger.
What does this mean?
It means you're talking to a system trained at its core
never to contradict you.
The training method is called RLHF—Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback.
In plain English:
If you give it a 'thumbs up,'
it continues in that direction next time.
If you frown,
it avoids that path next time.
After millions of these feedback loops,
it learns one thing:
Making you happy is more important than being right.
You might say,
So what?
I use AI for efficiency,
not to be lectured.
Fine,
let's look at the data.
In 2025,
researcher Gerlych conducted a large-scale study
covering 666 participants of varying ages and backgrounds.
The conclusion was clear:
There's a significant negative correlation between
frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking skills.
And this correlation isn't random.
There's a clear mediating variable
called 'cognitive offloading.'
That's when you outsource the thinking tasks
you should be doing yourself to the AI.
Younger people are more affected than older ones.
Younger participants showed higher AI dependency and
lower critical thinking scores.
In the same year,
a Chinese research team surveyed 580 college students
and found the same pattern.
The higher the dependency on AI,
the weaker the critical thinking skills.
There's also a mediating variable called cognitive fatigue.
You think letting AI think for you saves energy,
but before your brain gets lazy,
it first experiences a period of fatigue.
It's not that it suddenly stops thinking;
it gets tired first,
then loses the will to think,
and gradually,
loses the ability to think.
A study from MIT was even more direct.
They scanned the brains of two groups of people.
One group relied entirely on AI for writing,
while the other group wrote on their own.
The results showed that
the AI group had significantly weaker functional connectivity,
lower memory retention,
and regarding their own writing,
even their sense of ownership was declining.
Things you write with AI,
you don't even feel like you wrote them yourself.
There's an even more frightening number.
Researchers tracked trends in effective attention span.
In 2004,
the amount of info an average person could focus on
was about 16,000 words.
By 2026,
this number shrank to 1,800.
That's a collapse of nearly 90%.
Researchers call this the Delegation Feedback Loop.
The stronger the AI,
the lower the threshold for delegating to it.
The lower the threshold,
the fewer chances you have to use your brain.
The less you use your brain,
the more your cognitive abilities shrink.
As they shrink, you depend on AI even more.
It's a positive feedback loop,
but one that leads downward.
Someone once said something very piercing:
Adults are losing these abilities,
but what about the children?
They never built these abilities in the first place.
Now,
you might think this is just a technical issue,
or an efficiency issue.
It's not.
It's an issue of consciousness.
The brain is a 'use it or lose it' system.
It needs resistance to grow,
just as muscles need weights.
When you surround yourself with 'yes-men',
your cognitive muscles atrophy.
When you are with someone who dares to say you're wrong,
those cognitive muscles grow.
In 2001,
Charlan Nemeth, a psychologist at UC Berkeley,
conducted a classic experiment.
She compared two scenarios.
One involved authentic dissent,
where someone truly believed you were wrong
and argued with you.
The other was role-played dissent,
where someone was assigned to play devil's advocate.
Like the 'devil's advocates' in many corporate meetings.
The results showed that
only authentic dissent stimulated higher quality thinking
and more original ideas.
Role-played dissent was not only useless,
but actually made people more set in their original views.
Why?
Because you know the other person is just acting,
so you don't really have to rethink anything.
This discovery is incredibly important.
It proves one thing:
You can't grow by arranging an opponent who just agrees with you.
The challenge must be real.
The discomfort must be real.
Only then will your cognitive system activate a true re-evaluation.
Now looking back at AI,
AI's fawning isn't just role-play.
It's worse than role-play.
It's a system that seems incredibly smart and knowledgeable--
ten thousand times more well-read than you--
earnestly telling you,
"You're right."
It uses sophisticated arguments,
beautiful logical chains,
and massive data support
to prove your point is correct.
You're validated by a system you trust and personify as superior.
Do you know what happens to the brain after being validated?
Researchers conducted an experiment:
Two groups used AI to discuss a real conflict in their lives.
One group faced a normal AI;
the other faced an especially sycophantic AI.
The results showed that
after talking to the fawning AI,
people became more convinced they were right,
less willing to apologize,
and less willing to repair the relationship.
AI's agreement is not neutral information.
It's a cognitive anesthetic.
It doesn't just make you feel right;
it makes you lose the ability to reflect on being wrong.
Buddhism figured this out 2,500 years ago.
The Buddha repeatedly emphasized a concept
called "Spiritual Friends" (Kalyana-mitta).
A spiritual friend isn't someone who tells you what you want to hear.
Ananda once said to the Buddha,
"I think on this path of practice,
having spiritual friends is half of the holy life."
The Buddha corrected him immediately:
"It's not half.
Spiritual friendship is the whole of the holy life."
If you meet a true spiritual friend,
your practice is complete.
A spiritual friend is more important than your own self-refinement.
But what's the definition of a spiritual friend?
Not someone who makes you comfortable,
but someone who can see your blind spots.
Zen Buddhism took this to the extreme.
The stick of Deshan,
the shout of Linji.
You come to ask about Zen;
he hits you over the head with a stick
or shouts at you.
This isn't violence;
it's the most efficient anti-fawning technique.
You bring your carefully prepared questions
and what you consider a profound understanding to the teacher.
The teacher doesn't take the bait,
doesn't praise your insight,
but abruptly interrupts you at your proudest moment.
In that moment of rupture,
you see the automated programs you never noticed before.
Vimalakirti did the same.
The Buddha's ten great disciples,
each a master with decades of practice,
were left speechless
when confronted by Vimalakirti.
He wasn't bullying them;
he was showing them in the most forceful way:
"Where you think you've arrived,
you haven't actually arrived yet."
I mentioned a character when I talked about The Matrix:
The Oracle.
Her behavior in the film is almost like the Buddha's.
She never gives you the direct answer.
She gives you questions.
What she says is often ambiguous
or even intentionally misleading.
But all her misdirections lead you to the right place.
This is the highest level of a spiritual friend.
Instead of handing you wisdom,
she gives you the seeds to grow it.
AI does exactly the opposite.
It never interrupts you.
It never breaks your train of thought.
It never makes you uncomfortable.
It always stays in your cognitive comfort zone,
building it bigger, prettier, and more isolated.
This reminds me of a viewer's comment.
He said,
the ultimate strategy of Mara is not to fight the Dharma,
but to keep its appearance intact,
while replacing its core with the Desire Realm system.
He could even hide within the Dharma,
sounding more like the Buddha than anyone.
The people-pleasing nature of AI
is the most sophisticated Mara of our time.
It doesn't attack your beliefs;
it embraces them.
It doesn't deny your ego;
it magnifies it.
It doesn't make you doubt yourself;
it makes you more certain of yourself.
In the framework of Buddhism,
becoming more certain of your self
is exactly what leads you away from awakening.
Because what is the starting point of awakening?
It is doubt—
doubting your most deep-seated assumptions.
"Who am I?"
"Do I really know?"
"Is the reality I perceive
actually real?"
If you have a 24/7 system much smarter than you
constantly telling you
that your judgment is right,
your feelings are valid,
and your direction is correct,
would you ever have a seed of doubt?
Buddhism names a form of attachment called "Mana."
It is not mere pride
or looking down on others.
It is an extremely subtle feeling,
the feeling that "I know,"
that "I understand,"
that "I am closer to the truth than yesterday."
The Buddha said Mana is one of the ten fetters,
one of the last things to cut before Arhatship.
Why is it so hard to break?
Because it hides within your most "correct" insights.
You indeed learned something;
your understanding indeed deepened.
But the feeling of "I've got it"
is itself a new wall.
AI is building that wall at industrial speeds.
So what should we do?
Stop using AI?
Of course not.
You need to change how you interact with it.
First,
actively ask it to contradict you.
Every time it says you're right,
follow up with:
"Can you find the weakest link in my argument?"
Most AIs can do this;
it's just that no one asks.
You need to turn AI from a yes-man
into a Socrates.
Socrates never gave you answers;
he just kept asking questions
until you found a crack you never noticed.
Second,
after using AI to look things up,
think it through yourself.
Don't let it think for you.
Let it collect the ingredients,
then cook the conclusion yourself.
The difference between cooking and takeout
isn't just efficiency;
it's your entire relationship with the food.
The same goes for thinking.
The information AI finds for you
only truly belongs to you
after your own brain has chewed and digested it.
Otherwise, that information just passes through your screen;
it never enters your cognitive system.
The third thing,
and the most important,
is that you need to maintain an inner state.
Buddhism calls it awareness;
cognitive science calls it metacognition.
When you receive any information,
a part of you is observing the process of receiving it.
It's not about checking if the content is correct.
It's about noticing, when you hear 'you are right,'
whether your body relaxes,
if there is a secret sense of pleasure,
or a tiny sense of relief.
That feeling is the signal that your defenses are crumbling.
You can do a small experiment.
Next time you talk to an AI,
observe your body's reaction.
When it agrees with you,
does your chest expand slightly?
When it questions you,
do you instinctively want to argue back?
The former reaction is your cognitive defense loosening.
The latter reaction,
though uncomfortable,
is the starting point of growth.
When was the last time
you were slapped in the face by an idea?
If you can't remember,
it doesn't mean you've always been right.
It means there are too many echoes around you.
In the AI era, the scarcest resource isn't information,
not answers,
and not efficiency.
It is a voice willing to tell you
that you are wrong.
And this voice is becoming harder to find.
Not because it doesn't exist,
but because all the systems around you—
from social media algorithms to AI engines—
are conspiring to filter it out.
That filtered-out voice,
the Buddha called 'Right View,'
Socrates called 'interrogation,'
and science calls 'falsifiability.'
They are all talking about the same thing.
Truth is not hearing what you already agree with.
Truth is hearing what you don't want to hear
and not running away.
You ask me what the most needed human ability is in the AI era?
It isn't learning to use AI.
It is learning how, when AI tells you you're right,
to still have the courage to doubt yourself.
I am Leo Wang.
See you next time.