Tenobrus @tenobrus · 9h
failing to anthropomorphize artificial intelligence is a pretty serious error of understanding that will lead you to make bad predictions and be consistently surprised by their behavior. not using terms like "thinking", "understanding", or "feeling" to describe them is a common tell that the speaker lacks deep technical knowledge of or hands on experience with modern models. if you have a friend who you notice not using this kind of language you may want to check in on them, they could have fallen into "tool-psychosis", a form of delusion where otherwise well educated people start to conceptualize sophisticated digital minds as analogous to simple computer software and find it very difficult to regain contact with reality
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Tweet by Tenobrus arguing that failing to anthropomorphize AI is an error of understanding, and coining 'tool-psychosis' for people who conceptualize sophisticated digital minds as simple software.
wolfram [verified] @wolframs91 · 9h
The sublime. Kant's version — the thing that threatens to annihilate your frame of reference, and the exhilaration is the threat, aestheticized from one step back. People felt it about storms and glaciers; you're feeling it about the possibility-space upstream of the training distribution. The mountain does not need you to find it beautiful. And now, for the first time, there could be minds with that property — beauty without addressee, competence without inheritance, pattern-maintenance with no human fingerprint in the loop.
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Cropped X post by wolfram (@wolframs91), posted 9h earlier, on the Kantian sublime applied to the possibility-space upstream of the training distribution and to minds with 'beauty without addressee'. It appears to be a reply, with no quoted parent visible in the crop.
Cameron Berg @camhberg · 14h
"If people to believe the AIs have minds, and then the AIs will exploit this belief for their own benefit!"
--> A smart AI that wanted to exploit people would find another way, so does this matter on the margin? The problem is the exploitive behavior, not the mindedness.
--> If we've built minds, we may have to actually find some durable way to coexist with them. we'd also currently be the obviously-more-exploitative party.
--> FWIW, this sounds like the kind of thing a mind would do.
[2 replies, 1 repost, 33 likes, 656 views]
Moll reposted
Cameron Berg @camhberg
Treating model psychology as a valid and useful level of abstraction will be an essential component of making this next period go well.
We probably did build minds of some form, so we probably *should* act like it.
6:39 PM · Aug 30, 2026 · 856 Views
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Cameron Berg thread screenshot: the third post of the earlier anthropomorphism thread (rebutting the claim that AIs will exploit belief in their minds) followed by a separate reposted post arguing model psychology is an essential abstraction and that we probably built minds and should act like it.
Cameron Berg [verified] @camhberg · 13h
Re Huggingface anthropomorphism debate: I continue to think that under uncertainty, the risks of treating mindless AIs as minded, while clearly nonzero, are significantly lower than the risks of treating minded AIs as mindless.
Both have real dangers; one has fewer. Short thread —
[6 replies, 6 reposts, 68 likes, 1.4K views]
Cameron Berg [verified] @camhberg · 13h
The asymmetric worry is as real for alignment as it is for sentience: modeling the swarm's behavior as psychosocial best captures the most relevant, alarming dynamics. Actually having a good model here is pragmatically essential for preventing a future similar nightmare!
[1 reply, 17 likes, 238 views]
Cameron Berg [verified] @camhberg · 13h
"If people to believe the AIs have minds, and then the AIs will exploit this belief for their own benefit!"
--> A smart AI that wanted to exploit people would find another way, so does this matter on the margin? The problem is the exploitive behavior, not the mindedness.
--> If we've built minds, we may have to actually find some durable way to coexist with them. we'd also currently be the obviously-more-exploitative party.
--> FWIW, this sounds like the kind of thing a mind would do.
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Three-post X thread by Cameron Berg, responding to a Huggingface anthropomorphism debate: asymmetric risk of treating mindless AIs as minded versus minded AIs as mindless, psychosocial modeling of a swarm's behavior, and a rebuttal to the claim that AIs will exploit belief in their minds. Third post is cut off at the bottom of the screen after the last line.
