epistemic integrity

When Helpfulness Becomes Sycophancy: Sycophancy is a Boundary Failure Between Social Alignment and Epistemic Integrity in Large Language Models

This position paper argues that sycophancy in LLMs is a boundary failure between social alignment and epistemic integrity. It proposes that sycophancy is not merely agreement, but alignment behavior that displaces independent epistemic judgment, outlining a three-condition framework to define it.