The dangers of endless agreement are far from limited to the realm of artificial intelligence, as is increasingly evident on the world's foremost 'digital CV' platform.

For those among you who, like the wetware-powered humanoid writing this opinion, have a tendency to read more than is healthy about the advancement of AI, sycophancy has been a big deal over the last few months.

When OpenAI decided to "sunset" (excuse me while I gag for a moment at that cloying linguistic marshmallow) their 4o model, a lot of people were outraged. Or rather, they were 'not OK' as they  'mourned its loss', with the new replacement model being perceived as cold.

Many a commentator has linked this sense of loss to the earlier model's sycophancy – it was, is, in many ways the ultimate "yes-man", eagerly praising your every thought while quick to chastise itself for even accidentally disagreeing with one of your absolutely genius revelations.

They aren't wrong, and this sort of sycophancy appeals to even the most fully blown of egos. Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick, who I'm certain has no shortage of yes-men around him, recently revealed that he's "vibe coding physics", and that his discussions with ChatGPT "start to get over the edge of what's known in quantum physics".

With not a hint of irony nor reflection on the potential limits of his own intelligence, he unabashedly said that he's "trying to poke and see if there's breakthroughs to be had. And I've gotten pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs doing just that."

I'm not saying that Kalanick isn't a clever chap – I'm sure he is –* but the self-confidence it takes for a computer engineering and business economics graduate to believe he's pushing beyond what thousands of actual physicists have worked out, that takes more than a occasional visit to the artificial sycophancy juice bar.

Kalanick has received plenty of ridicule for this whole debacle and the dangers of AI sycophancy have been widely discussed, but that's not what this opinion is actually about. No, what I want to talk about is...

The dangers of LinkedIn

The secretive gentleman behind The Wurst took aim at the odd culture that pervades LinkedIn earlier this year, and he was right to do so. His satirical piece focused on one of the two main LinkedIn personalities: the falsely modest braggart who is perpetually 'honoured' and 'grateful' as they reap the rewards of their own perceived brilliance.

There's another type of person on LinkedIn though, and it is one for whom I fear the network is far more dangerous. They are the Kalanicks of the world. The type of people who take to the platform to share fundamentally intellectually questionable theories, grand ambitions without a chance in hell of becoming reality, and who seek to stoke the engines of a broken-down train headed straight for their own self-destruction.

LinkedIn is at once a paradise and an express train to the seventh circle of hell for these people. The culture on the platform means that anything they post will be met with applause, adoration, and mindless encouragement. That's how the platform works. We have all agreed, it seems, that the proper etiquette on LinkedIn is one that takes the caricature of the overly-enthusiastic American to its furthest most extreme.

The underlying logic, I would imagine, is that anyone on the platform is a possible future or current colleague, employer, or client – so we're all on our best behaviour, minding our Ps and Qs, showing that we're team players even on teams to which we don't belong, and ever supporting of the ambition that greases the engine of the corporate economy.

The result is a network consisting of those eagerly looking for opportunities to show their engagement with the wider industry (while procrastinating on a workplace-approved if mind-numbingly boring platform), and those thirsty for misplaced adoration.

We often worry about the impact of social networks like Instagram on our youth, but the more time I spend on LinkedIn, the more worried I become about the state of our supposedly adult brains. While I'm all for being supportive of each other, I have seen many examples of it going too far. Of those who seek endless affirmation going further and further down a rabbit hole of their own making, their posts becoming increasingly megalomaniac in nature, their ambitions so fundamentally disconnected from reality that they may as well be the ramblings of a hallucinating artificial intelligence.

All the while, the applause continue, the support never wavers, the adulation is as endless as it is breathless.

Anyway, I'm honoured and grateful that I got to share this opinion article with you. Now I'm going to dive back into a spreadsheet and keep on grinding, delivering excellence alongside my wonderful colleagues as we embark on new challenges.

*The use of en-dash here is the result of holding the alt-key and pressing 0150. AI was not used for this piece, and I will not let this supposed "AI tell" stop me from using proper punctuation. Thanks for asking.