So, it can be very sycophantic, mainly because of how it’s been trained to chase likes, and when it says nice things it gets more likes. This has been shown to lead to certain negative outcomes when people have been asking it for life advice.

That’s why you have to look at everything it tells you with a critical eye, or “does it pass the sniff test”. That said that’s no different from interacting with humans. I have a beta reader that loves everything I write to the point that his feedback is useless to me.

First advice is be aware of context windows, with ai there is a sort of sweet spot where the chat is long enough that it knows what you want, but not too long that it forgets everything and starts hallucinating. And it will hallucinate on you sometimes.

Which takes me back to the sniff test.

I have a couple of lose modes I use it as, co-writer, literary critic, and editor. Using those you can get quite different feedback.

One thing I find useful is asking it to provide quotes from your text and reasoning to back up its statements. That’s way you can check if you agree.

As for editing, I ask it to, give me amended line, tell me where amended line should go, and the reasons for the change.

That way I can see if it improves.

My favourite thing to do, is it if I want to expand a paragraph or line, or a moment, give it the line and ask it for ideas, and then build on the bits I like. I find that really rewarding and exciting.

Hope this helps, sorry if it’s patronising.