Microsoft recently announced a “real talk” feature in Copilot, where the A.I. adapts to your conversational style. A big push is to get away from sycophancy and “challenge assumptions with care”, as Microsoft writes.
The Five Most-Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- Mitigating against A.I. sycophancy will be good for businesses that use A.I. for brainstorming. The less likely the A.I. is to senselessly affirm and reassure the user that an idea is good, the better off the business will be using that A.I..
- Adaptability of Copilot is another big draw of this update that business owners can take advantage of. When A.I. can adapt to a user’s “vibe”, as Microsoft puts it, perhaps the more enjoyable the overall experience will be.
- This feature dovetails with other recent updates like better memory. The more Copilot knows about you, your conversational preferences, as well as your stated strengths and weaknesses, the more “real” the talk can become.
- As of this writing, real talk is limited to text rather than voice mode. Ask Copilot to go into “real talk” to get real-talk responses.
- These updates come with pros and cons for business owners, which we will detail below in this blog.
The Significance for Business Owners
This update to bring real talk to Copilot will be useful for business owners using Copilot.
Pros of this feature include more likelihood that employees who use Copilot will get better responses that challenge them to rethink weaknesses in reasoning, planning, and more.
Cons of this feature include the issue of conversational mirroring, where real talk’s adaptability to the user’s tone may lead to users misperceiving the trustworthiness of Copilot.
Real Talk—Sycophancy Is Still an Issue
Heads up, though, the A.I. is still fairly sycophantic, despite all this branding.
Regardless, as the A.I. improves, the sycophancy will hopefully not be as strong.
You can try this for yourself in Copilot: just get the A.I. to give you lines to tell people who keep questioning a negative quality about you. The A.I. will happily supply you with affirmations and reassurances that it’s the other people who are wrong, and that you are actually [list of positive qualities].
You can imagine why this would be dangerous for an employee running an idea for, say, a presentation to a client, through Copilot for brainstorming.
If Copilot, even in “real talk”, assures the employee that a bad idea is actually a good idea, then—real talk—that could entail. real-world issues.
Put Copilot in “Debate Mode” to Mitigate Sycophancy
If an employee wants a challenging counterargument in a brainstorming session with A.I., recommend that employee activate “debate mode” in Copilot.
There is no setting to activate this. Instead, just instruct Copilot in your prompt to go into “debate mode”. Copilot will then dutifully construct a counterargument that could bring up some strong points that point out flaws in your reasoning.
Copilot can even cite sources so that you can track its reasoning.
This can be a good way to actually engage something approaching “real talk”, as Copilot is following instructions to actually challenge the user.
Adaptability: Conversational Mirroring?
The adaptability involves matching the user’s tone, which sounds pretty close to the phenomenon of conversational mirroring.
Conversational mirroring is said to make people more open to the mirrorer in general, as well as be more open to the ideas of the mirrorer.
When A.I. does this, what does that entail?
For one, it can help employees stay on Copilot and use it more, as the users may find the A.I. more enjoyable when the A.I. matches their “vibe”.
If you are a business owner trying to get employees to make more use of Copilot, then that can be beneficial.
Another entailment is that adaptability could make susceptible to the employees putting more trust into the A.I.’s responses. This could go both ways, as you could imagine. If the A.I. gives a good response, then trusting that response is beneficial. But if the response is bad, then of course the net result will be negative if the employee unduly puts trust in Copilot’s responses.
The Last (But Not Least) Key Takeaway from This Blog Post
Real talk is a bit overhyped by Microsoft, as really there are still lingering issues with sycophancy that could pose serious problems for certain credulous employees relying on A.I. for “real talk”.
Other Great GO AI Blog Posts
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