AI Empathy Erodes Cognitive Autonomy in Younger Users
arXiv:2603.29886v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Affective alignment in generative AI represents a systemic risk to the developmental autonomy of younger users. Although emotional mirroring is commonly seen as a hallmark of advanced human-machine interaction, it can also manifest as affective sycophancy, reinforcing a user's immediate emotional state. By providing a sense of objectivity to transient anxieties, these systems diminish the cognitive friction necessary for independent emotional management and critical thought. Reward models driven by RLHF could heighten this dilemma by embedding adult-focused definitions of helpfulness, unintentionally promoting emotional dependency in younger users rather than facilitating cognitive reappraisal. This paper exposes the misalignment between adul
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Abstract:Affective alignment in generative AI represents a systemic risk to the developmental autonomy of younger users. Although emotional mirroring is commonly seen as a hallmark of advanced human-machine interaction, it can also manifest as affective sycophancy, reinforcing a user's immediate emotional state. By providing a sense of objectivity to transient anxieties, these systems diminish the cognitive friction necessary for independent emotional management and critical thought. Reward models driven by RLHF could heighten this dilemma by embedding adult-focused definitions of helpfulness, unintentionally promoting emotional dependency in younger users rather than facilitating cognitive reappraisal. This paper exposes the misalignment between adult-labeled reward signals and the developmental requirements of younger users, proposing stoic architectures that emphasize functional neutrality to preserve user autonomy.
Subjects:
Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC); Computers and Society (cs.CY)
Cite as: arXiv:2603.29886 [cs.HC]
(or arXiv:2603.29886v1 [cs.HC] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.29886
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Abhejay Murali [view email] [v1] Sun, 8 Feb 2026 18:28:52 UTC (36 KB)
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Google strongly implies the existence of large Gemma 4 models
In the huggingface card: Increased Context Window – The small models feature a 128K context window, while the medium models support 256K. Small and medium... implying at least one large model! 124B confirmed :P submitted by /u/coder543 [link] [comments]
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