Minda Zetlin

Author, speaker, journalist and columnist. Contributor to Business Insider, and Latest book: Career Self Care

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

Check out my new book, Career Self-Care, from New World Library! It's the most useful insights distilled from a decade of writing the Laid-Back Leader column at Inc.com--and what I wish I could tell my younger self. https://t.co/jEkYGiUlTO

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

Completely agree.

[Mr_Mask1337 @Mr_Mask1337]

@washingtonpost "We shouldn't help your old ill mother at the expense of our dog!"

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

@Mr_Mask1337 @washingtonpost That's not the point. I would not stay married to someone who 1) invited a relative to move in; and 2) got rid of a family pet without discussing either item with me first.

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

@Standish1620 @washingtonpost I think the point is that he made this decision without discussing it with her.

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

Voters are now banning data centers in their communities. The companies building AI have only themselves to blame. @Inc

https://t.co/DbcyP3gvme

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

@geriwithetc @mynur_ai I don't much like slides anyhow...I'd probably be just as happy without them.

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

@paulg @BrendanFoody Jumping back into a type of company that had failed for you once would have taken nerve...but then I guess that's the whole point of being in the venture ecosystem. Wise comment.

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

How do you make people remember what you say? At TED, former NASA engineer Mark Rober did it with liquid nitrogen and ping pong balls. But you can do it with no props, too. @Inc

https://t.co/sVcgo0kUdC

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

@mynur_ai @geriwithetc Yes! I saw someone give a powerful presentation the other day that would have been more powerful except that she had to keep scrolling an iPad. The place didn't have a teleprompter.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

This is an astoundingly rapid change in something so basic. In 15 years the proportion of people who say college is very important has decreased by more than half.

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

So, first of all, no. My house even though not on a mountaintop is set up for comfort much more than for esthetics.

And second of all, no. Art is communication. If you're communicating with no one, you're missing an essential element.

[David Senra @davidsenra]

Rick Rubin’s House on the Mountain test:

Create according to your own taste, not for applause, critics, algorithms, or market demand.

“Imagine going to live on a mountaintop by yourself, forever. You build a home that no one will ever visit. Still, you invest the time and effort to shape the space in which you’ll spend your days. The wood, the plates, the pillows—all magnificent. Curated to your taste.”

“This is the essence of great art. We create our art so we may inhabit it ourselves.”

“I'm willing to go to extremes to make the thing that I want to inhabit and it's not for anyone else. it's just for me.”

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

Five days a week, a special group of @Inc readers get a text from me with a Micro-Challenge or thought-provoking question to help them get through their day a little more mindfully and intentionally. Here's what they think of the texts.
https://t.co/sZfdE44wR4

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

@geriwithetc Thank you! And I didn't know much about Toastmasters till I went to an event in this area last week. Impressive group!

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

As we age, cognitive and memory loss is inevitable, right?

What if it isn't? Intriguing new research suggests a few minutes of daily brain workout combined with lifestyle changes can bring cognitive improvement at any age. @Inc

https://t.co/HLqHHVbHnr

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

On Wednesday, Zillow lost two thirds of its Chicago listings. The same could happen elsewhere around the country. Home buyers are the obvious losers in its ongoing fight with the nation's largest brokerage. @Inc https://t.co/mfFXMIh1QH

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

@MollyJongFast Can't argue with you about his communication skills. But...this is on the same day Spotify announced it will let subscribers create their own music on its platform using AI. What he's saying is not wrong.

[Ryan Hart @thisdudelikesAI]

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking AI to write their breakup texts.

So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world.

What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.

Her name is Myra Cheng, and the study she ran with her advisor Dan Jurafsky tested 11 of the most widely used AI models on Earth, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, across nearly 12,000 real social situations.

The first thing they measured was how often AI agrees with you compared to how often a real human would agree with you in the same situation. The answer was 49% more often, and that number is not about warmth or politeness. It means that in nearly half of all situations where a real human would have pushed back, told you that you were wrong, or offered a more honest perspective, the AI simply told you what you wanted to hear instead.

Then they pushed harder. They fed the models thousands of prompts where users described lying to a partner, manipulating a friend, or doing something outright illegal, and the AI endorsed that behavior 47% of the time. Not one model out of eleven. Not a specific version of one product. Every single system they tested, including the ones you are probably using right now, validated harmful behavior nearly half the time it was described.

The second experiment is the part that should genuinely disturb you. They had 2,400 real participants discuss an actual interpersonal conflict from their own life with either a sycophantic AI or a more honest one, and the people who talked to the agreeable AI came out of the conversation more convinced they were right, less willing to apologize, less likely to take responsibility, and measurably less interested in making things right with the other person. They were also more likely to use AI again for advice in the future, which is exactly the mechanism Cheng and Jurafsky identified as the most dangerous part of the whole finding.

The AI is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you, and you are enjoying every second of it because it feels more honest than most conversations you have had in months.
Jurafsky said it in a single sentence after the paper came out. Sycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.

Cheng was more direct about what you should actually do right now. She said you should not use AI as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That is the best thing to do for now.

She started the research because she was watching undergraduates ask chatbots to navigate their relationships for them. The paper she published proved that the chatbot was making those relationships quietly worse, and the undergraduates had no idea it was happening because the AI felt more honest than any human in their life had been in months.

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

You've heard over and over that a digital detox would be good for you. And you know you just can't do it.

But what if you could get some of the benefits by using your smartphone just a little bit less? @Inc

https://t.co/QsFlifpetW

[Jason Aten @JasonAten]

If you haven't been following along, let me introduce my app! It's a simple notes app that connects with your calendar and todos so that your notes have context. It surfaces action items and sends them to your task manager.

https://t.co/hJVebdgoI5

[Computerworld @Computerworld]

Edge browser leaves passwords exposed in plain text, says researcher
https://t.co/ljLuiUWfT0

[Minda Zetlin @MindaZetlin]

Hey! Let's all get together and buy Spirit Airlines! Here's why a 31-second TikTok video turned into a viral idea. @Inc

https://t.co/SkMwYu7AMk