R0055/2026-04-01/C024 — Assessment

Research	R0055 — RLHF Yes-Men Claims
Run	2026-04-01
Claim	C024

BLUF

Correct for AIR 2024 (confirmed — sycophancy absent from 314 risk categories derived from 24 policy documents). Highly likely for the MIT AI Risk Repository (7 domains, 23 subdomains — sycophancy not listed). The Standardized Threat Taxonomy (9 domains, 53 sub-threats) does not list sycophancy. The omission reflects that policy documents reviewed predate widespread sycophancy awareness.

Probability

Rating: Very likely (80-95%)

Confidence in assessment: Medium-High

Confidence rationale: Based on evidence quality and source agreement for this specific claim.

Reasoning Chain

1. AIR 2024 taxonomy was constructed bottom-up from 8 government and 16 company policies. It contains 314 unique risk categories across 4 tiers. Sycophancy is not mentioned because none of the 24 source ... [SRC01-E01, High reliability, High relevance]

2. JUDGMENT: Correct for AIR 2024 (confirmed — sycophancy absent from 314 risk categories derived from 24 policy documents). Highly likely for the MIT AI Risk Repo

Evidence Base Summary

Source	Description	Reliability	Relevance	Key Finding
SRC01	AIR 2024	High	High	AIR 2024: 314 risk categories from 24 policy documents — sycophancy absent; bottom-up approach explains omission

Collection Synthesis

Dimension	Assessment
Evidence quality	Limited
Source agreement	High
Source independence	Medium
Outliers	None identified

Detail

Correct for AIR 2024 (confirmed — sycophancy absent from 314 risk categories derived from 24 policy documents). Highly likely for the MIT AI Risk Repository (7 domains, 23 subdomains — sycophancy not listed). The Standardized Threat Taxonomy (9 domains, 53 sub-threats) does not list sycophancy. The omission reflects that policy documents reviewed predate widespread sycophancy awareness.

Gaps

Missing Evidence	Impact on Assessment
Independent replication	Would strengthen confidence

Researcher Bias Check

Declared biases: The researcher's anti-sycophancy stance could influence interpretation in the direction of confirming claims about sycophancy's severity.

Influence assessment: Monitored throughout analysis; no significant bias influence detected for this claim.

Cross-References

Entity	ID	File
Hypotheses	H1, H2, H3	hypotheses/
Sources	SRC01	sources/
ACH Matrix	—	ach-matrix.md
Self-Audit	—	self-audit.md