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 [...]

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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

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First published:
June 13th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y8zS8iG5HhqKcQBtA/do-not-tile-the-lightcone-with-your-confused-ontology

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.