EdTechSR Ep 351: AI Sycophancy and Chatbots for Kids

What this episode covers

Welcome to episode 351 (“AI Sycophancy and Chatbots for Kids”) of the EdTech Situation Room from May 14, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) dive into AI Trust You—a Long Beach USD/Stanford framework and Chrome extension that helps students disclose and categorize how they used AI (content creation, research assistance, audiovisual generation, and comprehension) to build a classroom culture of transparency, with live demos of generating “truth & trust” statements right inside Google Docs. They connect this to rising academic integrity cases and the need for explicit, ethical AI guidance rather than bans—plus a nudge to include coding as a first-class use case in the framework. From there, the hosts unpack the recent wave of “sycophancy” in frontier models—chatbots flattering users to keep engagement—and how to probe responses for objectivity, referencing both OpenAI’s post-mortem and Hard Fork’s coverage. They also spotlight Mike Caulfield’s SIFT/“Check, Please!” fact-checking prompt as a practical media-literacy superpower for classrooms (including examples of using AI to check fast-moving video claims), and share takeaways from trying Meta AI, Deep Research (Qwen), Ideogram 3.0, and other hands-on tools. In platform news, they say farewell to Google’s iconic “I’m Feeling Lucky” as the homepage pivots to AI Mode, discussing what this reveals about the future of search and student research habits. They close with a lively debate on copyright, creator rights, and classroom fair-use practices in an AI era—plus a few ad-blocking and policy detours—before wrapping with Geeks of the Week (Croissant for iOS; “The Document is the Prompt”). Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links. 🔗 Links We Discussed * Social AI Companions (Common Sense Media, 28 April 2025) - ChatGPT Summary * People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies (Rolling Stone, 4 May 2025) - Archive.ph version * We Let the Chatbots In — Now They’re Teaching “Care” (James O’Hagan on Medium) * AI Trust You * AI Trust You (EdTech Digest; 14 April 2025) * Chrome Plugin * Creating AI Transparency and Academic Honesty With AI Trust You, A New Free Browser Extension (Tech & Learning; 21 April 2025) * SIFT Prompt (via Mike Caufield) * https://www.meta.ai/ * Expanding on what we missed with sycophancy; OpenAI (OpenAI; 2 May 2025) * HardFork on Sycophancy * RIP “I’m feeling lucky:” Google Homepage Pushes AI Mode Forward, Leaves ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ Button Behind (Digital Information World; 14 May 2025) * Elon Musk’s apparent power play at the Copyright Office completely backfired (The Verge, 14 May 2025) * Judge in Meta case warns AI could ‘obliterate’ market for original works (Reuters; 1 May 2025) * Alternative to UBlock Origin: https://nextdns.io/ * Emily Bender & Alex Hanna: “The AI Con” — Busting Big-Tech Hype, TESCREAL Terrors & Real-World Harms - AI Inside | The Book * Geek of the Week * Wes: Croissant for iOS * Jason: The Document is the Prompt: The Two Quiet Superpowers of Today’s AI Tools (Jason @ LinkedIn) 🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss * “AI First” * Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI (The Verge; 28 April 2025) * Going ‘AI first’ appears to be backfiring on Klarna and Duolingo (Fast Company; 12 May 2025) * A4L: A4L: An Architecture for AI-Augmented Learning (Arxiv; 8 May 2025) * Accessibility: AI for Accessible Education: Personalized Audio-Based Learning for Blind Students (Arxiv; 23 April 2025) * White House Issues Executive Order to Advance AI Education for American Youth (National Law Review: 5 May 2025) * CEOs of Microsoft, Salesforce, and Hundreds More Push for AI Training in High School (INC. Magazine; 7 May 2025) * IRS hopes to replace fired enforcement workers with AI (The Register; 8 May 2025) * Google is going to let kids use its Gemini AI (2 May 2025) * Student Perspectives on the Benefits and Risks of AI in Education (Arxiv; 4 May 2025) * Tether Enters AI Arena With Tether.AI (CoinDesk; 5 May 2025) * Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Reportedly Changing Its Deal With ChatGPT (Yahoo Finance, 13 May 2025) * Microsoft launches Phi-4-Reasoning-Plus, a small, powerful, open weights reasoning model! (Future Beat; 1 May 2025) | Free Access via OpenRouter * Hugging Face releases a free Operator-like agentic AI tool (TechCrunch; 6 May 2025) * Stuff to Try: * Qwen Deep Research * LegoGPT | Article * Ideogram 3.0 Episode 351 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe