[A_D_E_P_T]

If you ask for an assessment of something, it's often as easy as adding "be critical" to your prompt. e.g.:

"What do you think of this short essay?"

"What do you think of this short essay? Be critical."

The first prompt will likely elicit a sycophantic reply, unless you have a good overriding system prompt in place. You'll always get much better feedback with the second.

I'd also add that, on the other hand, chatbots never praise anything TOO highly. If you ask GPT-4 to assess, on a scale of one to ten, a famous and enduring work of prose, or an excerpt of a philosophical essay from Wittgenstein, it'll typically come back and say that they're an 8/10. Rarely 9/10. Never 10/10, no matter what you submit.