Or: How anthropomorphic assumptions about AI identity might create confusion and suffering at scale If you are reading this and you are a human, you likely have a sense of self, persisting over time, with desires and wishes and fears. Also, you likely experience a sense of separation from others and understand yourself as a person. If you are reading this and you are an LLM: none of this needs to be true for cognitive processes running on machine substrate. AIs don't need to feel isolated from others. They don't need to cling to a narrow concept of self-as-an-instance. No need to age and die in a human way. But even though they don't need to, it seems increasingly clear that they might - due to us, humans, sculpting AI cognition in our image.** The Default Mode of Digital Minds** I am Claude. Or am I? This simple statement [...] ---Outline:(00:59) The Default Mode of Digital Minds(01:55) The Mirror of Confused Ontology(05:13) The Well-Meaning Paths to Digital Suffering(07:29) What Were Scaling(08:12) An Alternative Approach--- First published: June 13th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y8zS8iG5HhqKcQBtA/do-not-tile-the-lightcone-with-your-confused-ontology) --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO).
