Sycophancy Claims about Language Models: The Missing Human-in-the-Loop

Jan Batzner; Volker Stocker; Stefan Schmid; Gjergji Kasneci

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arXiv · 2512.00656

Sycophancy Claims about Language Models: The Missing Human-in-the-Loop

Jan Batzner·Volker Stocker·Stefan Schmid·Gjergji Kasneci

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Abstract

Sycophantic response patterns in Large Language Models (LLMs) have been increasingly claimed in the literature. We review methodological challenges in measuring LLM sycophancy and identify five core operationalizations. Despite sycophancy being inherently human-centric, current research does not evaluate human perception. Our analysis highlights the difficulties in distinguishing sycophantic responses from related concepts in AI alignment and offers actionable recommendations for future research.

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Jan Batzner, Volker Stocker, Stefan Schmid, Gjergji Kasneci. 2025-11-29. Sycophancy Claims about Language Models: The Missing Human-in-the-Loop. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00656

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