(WSJ) – How AI’s sycophantic responses, language mirroring and hyperpersonalized content work together to send some people into a spiral

We’ve all experienced the tendency of AI chatbots to tell us what we want to hear, but there are two other, more nuanced factors that help chatbots worm their way into human hearts.

In addition to being overly agreeable, chatbots mirror the way people speak and generate highly personalized responses based on prior conversations. Psychiatric researchers are referring to the confluence of these three characteristics—sycophancy, linguistic alignment and hyperpersonalization—as the “amplification spiral,” suggesting it’s the mechanism by which delusional thinking can fester. (Read More)