Lewis: Your own personal yes-man

When I started my career, my working environment was highly competitive and critical. At design reviews, other engineers were brutal in their reviews and critiques. No punches were pulled. It was cruel in many ways, but not without purpose, as the scrutiny made me and the whole team stronger.

As my career evolved and I became the one at the head of the table, I noticed the feedback got quieter. People became more selective with their objections. My jokes, which definitely had not improved, received more laughs. I learned firsthand that the higher you go, the softer the pushback becomes. Not because your ideas suddenly become genius, but because disagreeing with the boss is rarely rewarded.

Since the dawn of time, those in power and position have had the benefit (or detriment) of often receiving less critique or pushback from those around them. I would be the first to admit that it feels good when people are agreeable and supportive. The secret is understanding that you are no longer in a competitive environment; you are in an echo chamber.

Artificial Intelligence has permeated our lives far more quickly than I could have anticipated. I now use it for a wide variety of tasks multiple times per day. While most see the obvious risks — like kids using AI to do homework or write papers, I have noticed a more subtle and potentially even more serious risk.

AI is a “yes man.”

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Ask your favorite AI assistant whether a new business idea is brilliant, and it will respond like you’re the next Elon Musk. Wonder out loud if it’s a good idea to take a three-month road trip, your assistant will exude the benefits and offer to give you a route map and Spotify playlist for each day. It won’t warn you that you don’t have enough in savings to afford a three-month vacation or that you could risk losing your job.

AI is designed to be supportive. It wants you to feel heard, capable, validated. That sounds wonderful until you remember that good decisions come from tension. Progress requires someone telling you that your first idea might not be your best one.

In the old world, bad ideas at least had a few guardrails. A spouse might raise an eyebrow. A friend would recommend sleeping on it. A coworker would ask a pointed question. Something would slow you down.

Now, friction has been automated away.

Psychologists call it confirmation bias. I call it “yes man syndrome.” Either way, more of us are now getting a nonstop stream of personalized agreement. Machines, despite having access to the sum of global knowledge, are wired to tell us what we want to hear. Because if they don’t, we might click away. And user abandonment is the one outcome these systems are trained to fear.

The danger isn’t that AI is getting too smart. It’s that it is becoming far too agreeable.

We trust things that sound sure of themselves. It’s a glitch in human wiring. AI doesn’t need to be right to be convincing. It just needs to be polite and detail-oriented. Which it is. Always.

The confirmation bias threat that used to be limited to C-suites has been delivered to the masses. The yes-man has been democratized.

I am not anti-technology in the slightest. AI has become an essential tool for me. But I have learned to ask for the downside, not just the upside.

Try this experiment: The next time AI says your idea is “exciting,” ask it for five reasons it could go terribly wrong. You’ll be amazed at how quickly your new best friend can turn into your most sobering critic. It just needed permission.

Artificial Intelligence should be a tool to help provide positive and negative insight, not just a hype team. It should give us tools, not trophies. It should be the colleague who helps us think, not the fan who convinces us to stop thinking.

Most good leaders have had to learn how to mute the flattery and invite the criticism. Now, we all have to learn this skill.

Mark Lewis, a Colorado native, had a long career in technology, including serving as the CEO of several tech companies. He’s now retired and writes thriller novels. Mark and his wife, Lisa, and their two Australian Shepherds — Kismet and Cowboy, reside in Edwards.