The characters models play, and emotion-like internal states and their causal role.
Open questions
- What is the subject
- Whose valence is it
- Which activations belong to the Assistant
- Writing about a character or becoming it
- Do functional emotions matter
- Coherence across personas
Papers
- Han Chalmers Izmailov 2026 - Functional welfare axis
- Beckmann Butlin 2026 - Where is the mind
- Gilg et al 2026 - Probing persona-dependent preferences
- Tagliabue Dung Berg 2026 - The pain axis
- Sofroniew et al 2026 - Emotion concepts
- Lu et al 2026 - The Assistant Axis
- Chen et al 2025 - Persona vectors
- Betley et al 2025 - Tell me about yourself
- Marks Lindsey Olah 2026 - The persona selection model
- Shanahan McDonell Reynolds 2023 - Role play with LLMs
- Shanahan 2024 - Simulacra as conscious exotica
- Betley et al 2025 - Emergent misalignment
- Sun et al 2026 - Valence-arousal subspace
- Keeling Street et al 2024 - Pain and pleasure trade-offs
- Bianco Shiller 2026 - Mechanistic tracing of pain-pleasure decisions
- Ren et al 2026 - AI wellbeing
- Beyond mimicry 2025 - Preference coherence in LLMs
- Chua Betley Marks Evans 2026 - The consciousness cluster
- LessWrong 2026 - Which character are we evaluating
- Black Bloom 2026 - Machinic psychopharmacology
People
Placed by the editor, v1 — corrections welcome.