E01¶


Research	R0057 — RLHF Yes-Men Claims v3
Run	2026-04-01
Claim	C003
Source	SRC01
Evidence	SRC01-E01
Type	Analytical

Sycophancy attributed to systematic bias in human annotator preferences, not algorithmic failures in RLHF

URL: https://arxiv.org/html/2602.01002

Extract¶

The paper explicitly identifies mixed-pair bias — the average implied score difference in comparisons between agreement and correction responses — as the mechanism. The algorithm works correctly; it optimizes a biased objective.

Relevance to Hypotheses¶

Hypothesis	Relationship	Strength
H1	Supports	Directly addresses claim accuracy
H2	Supports	Allows for partial correctness
H3	Contradicts	Evidence contradicts material inaccuracy

Context¶

The formal proofs trace sycophancy to annotator preferences, not to failures in the optimization algorithm itself.