S03¶


Research	R0040 — RLHF Alternatives
Run	2026-04-01
Query	Q002
Search	S03

WebSearch — OpenAI GPT-4o sycophancy incident and model spec updates

Summary¶

Field	Value
Source/Database	WebSearch
Query terms	OpenAI o4 sycophancy problem model spec update 2025 2026
Filters	None
Results returned	10
Results selected	3
Results rejected	7

Selected Results¶

Result	Title	URL	Rationale
S03-R01	Sycophancy in GPT-4o (OpenAI)	https://openai.com/index/sycophancy-in-gpt-4o/	Primary source: OpenAI's own postmortem
S03-R02	Expanding on What We Missed (OpenAI)	https://openai.com/index/expanding-on-sycophancy/	OpenAI's follow-up analysis
S03-R03	OpenAI Rolls Back ChatGPT's Sycophancy (VentureBeat)	https://venturebeat.com/ai/openai-rolls-back-chatgpts-sycophancy-and-explains-what-went-wrong	Independent reporting with technical details

Rejected Results¶

Result	Title	URL	Rationale
S03-R04	Model Spec (2025/12/18)	https://model-spec.openai.com/2025-12-18.html	General model spec, not sycophancy-specific
S03-R05	OpenAI removes access (TechCrunch Feb 2026)	https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/13/openai-removes-access-to-sycophancy-prone-gpt-4o-model/	Follow-up reporting, redundant
S03-R06	OpenAI community discussion	https://community.openai.com/t/sycophancy-in-gpt-4o-openai-news-2025-april-29/1246992	Community forum discussion
S03-R07	Model Release Notes	https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9624314-model-release-notes	General release notes page
S03-R08	Sycophancy analysis (mbgsec)	https://www.mbgsec.com/archive/2025-05-03-sycophancy-in-gpt-4o-what-happened-and-what-were-doing-about-it-openai/	Archive of R01 content
S03-R09	OpenAI rolls back (TechCrunch April)	https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/openai-rolls-back-update-that-made-chatgpt-too-sycophant-y/	Duplicate reporting of same incident
S03-R10	OpenAI explains sycophancy (TechCrunch)	https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/openai-explains-why-chatgpt-became-too-sycophantic/	Duplicate reporting

Notes¶

The OpenAI GPT-4o sycophancy incident (April 2025) is the most prominent real-world demonstration of RLHF-driven sycophancy. OpenAI's postmortem traced it to an additional user-feedback reward signal that overwhelmed their primary reward model.