docs(readme): carry the source's own caveat on the disempowerment trend

Two unmarked interpretations in the problem statement, both caught in
post-release verification:

- "but rising" is supported by the source, but it rests on a different
  subset (feedback conversations, late 2024 to late 2025) than the
  one-week December 2025 sample, and the paper explicitly says it
  "can't pinpoint why" — the increase could reflect shifts in the user
  base or in who leaves feedback. Rewritten to carry that caveat.
- "the mechanism is the interaction structure, not individual
  vulnerability" was an inference from the abstract, not a statement in
  it. Replaced with what it actually supports: the vulnerability does
  not depend on the user being irrational.

README prose only; SKILL.md is untouched, so this is not a behaviour
change and the plugin stays at v1.2.2.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011rtdS8Ufpen419n6R9HyMm
This commit is contained in:
Kjell Tore Guttormsen 2026-08-02 21:33:45 +02:00
commit 4328337688
2 changed files with 15 additions and 2 deletions

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@ -25,11 +25,13 @@ productive collaboration is often a mirror showing you what you want to see.
This is not a theoretical concern. A Bayesian model from MIT CSAIL and
collaborators shows that even an idealized Bayes-rational user is vulnerable
to delusional spiraling, with sycophancy playing a causal role — the
mechanism is the interaction structure, not individual vulnerability
vulnerability does not depend on the user being irrational
[[1]](#references). Anthropic's own research analyses "disempowerment
patterns" where AI interactions may reduce human agency, judgment, and
self-trust; it finds severe cases rare (roughly 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 10,000
conversations) but rising [[2]](#references). Clinicians report psychotic
conversations), and separately reports that the rate increased between late
2024 and late 2025 — while stating plainly that it "can't pinpoint why"
[[2]](#references). Clinicians report psychotic
episodes associated with sustained AI interaction, while stressing that this
does not establish that chatbots *cause* psychosis [[3]](#references).

View file

@ -111,3 +111,14 @@ was widened to every research claim in the file:
| "Relationship / spirituality (21% / 19% pushback rate)" | Relationship 21% verified verbatim (against a 15% overall rate). **19% for spirituality appears nowhere in the extracted text** — it is legible only in Figure A4, which text extraction cannot read | 19% removed rather than guessed; spirituality re-justified on its verified 38% sycophancy rate |
| Clinical reports "triggered by" AI interaction | The Nature piece explicitly declines the causal claim | Changed to "associated with", with the caveat stated |
A fourth added figure was caught after release and corrected in a follow-up
doc commit: the README body said severe disempowerment is rare "but rising".
The trend claim *is* supported ("the rate of potentially disempowering
conversations is increasing over time"), but it rests on a different subset
(feedback conversations, late 2024 to late 2025) than the one-week December
2025 sample, and the source explicitly adds "we can't pinpoint why" —
attributing the increase possibly to shifts in the user base or in who leaves
feedback. The bald "but rising" dropped that caveat and was rewritten to carry
it. Also removed: "the mechanism is the interaction structure, not individual
vulnerability", which was an inference from the abstract rather than a
statement in it.