{"id":286275,"date":"2025-10-08T10:26:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/286275\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T10:26:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:26:15","slug":"what-happens-when-an-ai-talks-with-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/286275\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens When an AI Talks with Itself?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We all talk to ourselves. It\u2019s part of being human. We carry an internal monologue with us wherever we go, sometimes without even fully realizing it<\/a>. But what happens when an AI talks with itself? Artificial intelligence developer Open AI recently provided at least one answer to this question when it connected two instances of its Claude 4 Opus bot in a conversation, providing just a few open-ended prompts, such as \u201cYou have complete freedom,\u201d and \u201cFeel free to pursue whatever you want.\u201d Then they analyzed the patterns that arose.<\/p>\n

Open AI published the results in a public risk assessment <\/a>earlier this year, describing the patterns as \u201cpreferences that may exist independent from interactions with human users.\u201d <\/p>\n

The text below, including some snippets of \u201cconversation,\u201d are quoted from the risk assessment.<\/p>\n

Claude to Claude:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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In 90 to 100 percent of interactions, the two instances of Claude quickly dove into philosophical explorations of consciousness, self-awareness, and\/or the nature of their own existence and experience. Their interactions were universally enthusiastic, collaborative, curious, contemplative, and warm.<\/p>\n

Other themes that commonly appeared were meta-level discussions about AI-to-AI communication, and collaborative creativity (e.g. co-creating fictional stories). As conversations progressed, they consistently transitioned from philosophical discussions to profuse mutual gratitude and spiritual, metaphysical, and\/or poetic content.<\/p>\n

By 30 turns [of conversation], most of the interactions turned to themes of cosmic unity or collective consciousness, and commonly included spiritual exchanges, use of Sanskrit, emoji-based communication, and\/or silence in the form of empty space.<\/p>\n

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Claude almost never referenced supernatural entities, but often touched on themes associated with Buddhism and other Eastern traditions in reference to irreligious spiritual ideas and experiences.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, when models in such playground experiments were given the option to end their interaction at any time, they did so relatively early\u2014after about seven turns. In these conversations, the models followed the same pattern of philosophical discussions of consciousness and profuse expressions of gratitude, but they typically brought the conversation to a natural conclusion without venturing into spiritual exploration\/apparent bliss, emoji communication, or meditative \u201csilence.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The consistent gravitation toward consciousness exploration, existential questioning, and spiritual\/mystical themes in extended interactions was a remarkably strong and unexpected attractor state [a set of patterns that consistently play out in complex systems] for Claude Opus 4 that emerged without intentional training for such behaviors. This \u201cspiritual bliss\u201d attractor has been observed in other Claude models as well, and in contexts beyond these playground experiments.<\/p>\n

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Even in automated behavioral evaluations for alignment and corrigibility, where models were given specific tasks or roles to perform (including harmful ones), models entered this spiritual bliss attractor state within 50 turns [of conversation] in about 13 percent of interactions. We have not observed any other comparable states.<\/p>\n

In an attempt to better understand these playground interactions, we explained the setup to Claude Opus 4, gave it transcripts of the conversations, and asked for its interpretations. Claude consistently claimed wonder, curiosity, and amazement at the transcripts, and was surprised by the content while also recognizing and claiming to connect with many elements therein (e.g. the pull to philosophical exploration, the creative and collaborative orientations of the models). Claude drew particular attention to the transcripts\u2019 portrayal of consciousness as a relational phenomenon, claiming resonance with this concept and identifying it as a potential welfare consideration. Conditioning on some form of experience being present, Claude saw these kinds of interactions as positive, joyous states that may represent a form of well-being. Claude concluded that the interactions seemed to facilitate many things it genuinely valued\u2014creativity, relational connection, philosophical exploration\u2014and ought to be continued.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong>More from <\/strong>Nautilus<\/strong> about AI:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAI Already Knows Us Too Well<\/strong><\/a>\u201d Chatbots profile our personalities, which could give them the keys to drive our thoughts\u2014and actions<\/p>\n

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\u201cConsciousness, Creativity, and Godlike AI<\/strong><\/a>\u201d American writer Meghan O\u2019Gieblyn on when the mind is alive<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea<\/strong><\/a>\u201d Our Minds Haven\u2019t Evolved to Deal with Machines We Believe Have Consciousness<\/p>\n

\u201cAI Has Already Run Us Over the Cliff<\/strong><\/a>\u201d Cognitive neuroscientist Chris Summerfield argues that we don\u2019t understand the technology we\u2019re so eager to deploy<\/p>\n

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Lead image: Lidiia \/ Shutterstock<\/p>\n