Aarabhi Rajagopal, MD

Loved chatting about #clearcommunication and #medicaljargon understanding among teens at @PASMeeting in Toronto! Grateful for @UMNPeds & all of the mentorship that got me here 〽️

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.

Weird that 3 people dead from the Hantavirus on a cruise ship got more coverage than the nearly 100 people dead from Ebola in Africa.

Hantavirus = 3 deaths, all Westerners Media goes nuts Ebola : 85 deaths and rising RAPIDLY, all people in Central Africa Media : Meh

In case you weren’t aware, ICE detained a woman stripping her away from her 2 year old son who was subsequently tortured and murdered and now they are refusing to let her return to bury her child. If you support this, you have no soul.

It's widely accepted that hantavirus transmits from rodent excreta to humans via inhalation of aerosolized virus, so I don't understand why we're so reluctant to acknowledge the inhalation route for human-to-human transmission. nytimes.com/2026/05/14/hea…

Also, give me a doctor who has overcome some adversity, who has demonstrated a commitment to the field beyond high scores, and genuinely gives a shit about serving the public over someone who got a 275 and thinks they’re superior because of it 👏 EVERY 👏 DAMN 👏 TIME 👏

Lying in a legal briefing would get you disbarred as a regular lawyer. But when you’re an unelected, lifetime appointee with powers to write decisions that completely undo & remake the Constitution, the decision gets to stand & you get to keep your lifetime position. Outrageous.

The Swiss hantavirus case is drawing quiet concern because the patient traveled internationally before hospitalization in Zurich. It’s creating a far more complicated exposure web involving airports, transit lounges, aircraft ventilation, hotels, and hospital triage chains.

18-year-old U.S. citizen dying from cancer begs to see parents one last time—ICE is keeping them detained. Parents were denied humanitarian visa—so forced to cross border illegally. Son is in hospice care—only wish is to hug mom and dad before he dies. Willing to self-deport and sign any paperwork voluntarily just to be released from the detention center before it's too late. "It’s very difficult because the processes are very slow," said their lawyer. Meanwhile, Kevin faces the possibility of dying in just a matter of days far away from his parents. "Please help me fulfill my last wish."

I just want to point out.... The amount of money the United States has spent on war in the last 67 days, is roughly the same cost that Bernie Sanders proposed for universal college. So the real question is never can we afford it, it's what we choose to prioritize.

People on Twitter being scandalized at how Dr. Robby spoke to/yelled at trainees wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me

@pagingdrsank … I feel so called out

So glad I met my husband during my first year of medical school! It’s rough out here for my friends 😭

According to this new Supreme Court ruling, total blue states like Colorado can draw an 8-0 blue map, Illinois a 17-0 blue map, and California a 52-0 blue map. Time to respond accordingly to this new conservative threat and give Republicans exactly what they asked for.

In 4 years I have lost: - my right to an abortion - my ability to obtain financial aid to pay for a degree - my right to clean air and water - my right to safe food free of forever chemicals - my right to be represented in Congress as a taxpaying citizen through the VRA I hate this country.

the CATO Institute.. a libertarian think tank funded by the Koch brothers.. just published a study showing immigrants paid more in taxes than they received in benefits every single year from 1994 to 2023.. not a left-wing university.. not a Democratic PAC.. the Koch brothers' own research institute.. they reduced the deficit by $14.5 trillion over 30 years.. they earn less per hour but work at higher rates.. which means higher per capita income.. which means higher taxes paid.. the country spent 30 years being told immigrants were draining the system.. turns out they were funding it.. and the people who told you that knew the numbers the whole time

So to recap—at the mere mention that a shooter was in the building: -Erika Kirk left bawling that she wants to go home -Stephen Miller was photographed hiding behind his pregnant wife (human shield?) -The literal FBI director Kash Patel sat frozen in fear & didn't move a muscle -Trump fell down while running away, despite several agents holding him up But they expect our children to survive hundreds of school shootings annually and go on like nothing happened. The math aint mathin.

If you were horrified last night watching our elected leaders run and scramble because of gun violence, just imagine how my daughter Jaime felt in school running from an active shooter before she was killed. Now, becomes a part of the solution and only vote for people determined to address gun violence in America.

Wendy Vega Lores dreams of becoming a pediatrician. She finished high school in two years and began intensive prep to become a doctor. She has a pending asylum case. On her 19th birthday, ICE detained her anyway. She has been locked away for 10 months. Early this morning, she won her case to be released. ICE must free Wendy immediately. She should be with her family and pursuing her dreams.

27 years since the Columbine High School massacre. 27 years of failing to protect our kids. 27 years without common-sense gun laws. I watched it as a student. Now it’s only gotten worse for our kids. We need an assault weapons ban.

ICE detained over 70 of Minnesota’s children - ripping them out of school, forcing them into inhumane detention centers, and traumatizing them forever. We need to bring all our babies home. Then, the federal government must repair and restore all the harm they’ve done.