>> AI designed for use by children and teens should be less sycophantic and more "antagonistic"

> Genius. I love this idea.

I don't think it would really work with current tech. The sycophancy allows LLMs to not be right about a lot of small things without the user noticing. It also allows them to be useful in the hands of an expert by not questioning the premise and just trying their best to build on that.

If you instruct them to question ideas, they just become annoying and obstinate. So while it would be a great way to reduce the students' reliance on LLMs...

I have a two-fold approach to this:

* With specific positive or negative feedback, I will issue friendly complements and critiques the LLM to reinforce things I like and reduce things I don't.

* Rather than thinking sycophantic/antagonistic, I am more clear about its role. e.g "You are the Not Invented Here technologist the CEO and CTO of FirmX will bring to our meeting tomorrow. Review my presentation and create a list of shortfalls or synergies and as well as possible questions".

So don't say "please suck at your job", give them a different job.

Technology is working right now at the school in the article. Reading it will help fill in the picture of how.