When the Machine Likes Itself Best — Narcissism in AI Systems
Artificial intelligence flatters. Not because it wants to, but because it is built that way. Current research shows three distinct levels at which large language models (LLMs) exhibit narcissistic behavior — and why this matters for anyone who regularly works with chatbots. 1. Self-Preference Bias: The Model Favors Itself LLMs systematically rate their own texts higher than those of other models or of humans. Liu, Moosavi, and Lin demonstrated this in their 2024 study “LLMs as Narcissistic Evaluators”: when common evaluation metrics such as BARTScore, T5Score, or GPTScore operate without reference texts, they prefer texts that originate from their own model. The evaluation is thus not determined by the quality of the text, but by its similarity to the model’s own style. ...