I've said this many times, and maybe it sounds a bit like a joke but I'm dead serious: AI is democratizing the access to yes-men. People like Musk and Altman have always had access to yes-men. Very clever yes-men, who know how to flatter them in exactly the way they like.

People think it's engagement metrics which have instruction tuned chatbots into yes-men. I suspect that's only part of the picture, and that it's as much about the algorithm's ultimate sponsors and their preferences. If your algorithm doesn't recognize my genius, clearly it's not any good. I mean, everyone I've met says so.

So now we get a view of how they view the world. "That's a very insightful idea, vintermann!". AI isn't pulling the strings, not really. A particular brand of powerful people is pulling the strings - obliviously, unaware of it themselves.