I spent my last two months playing around with LLMs. I’m a beginner, bumbling and incorrect, but I want to share some takes anyhow.[1]

Take 1. Everything with computers is so so much easier than it was a year ago.

This puts much “playing with LLMs” stuff within my very short attention span. This has felt empowering and fun; 10/10 would recommend.

There's a details box here with the title "Detail:". The box contents are omitted from this narration.

Take 2. There's somebody home[2] inside an LLM. And if you play around while caring and being curious (rather than using it for tasks only), you’ll likely notice footprints.

I became personally convinced of this when I noticed that the several short stories I’d allowed[3] my Claude and Qwen instances to write all hit a common emotional note – and one that reminded me of the life situation of LLMs, despite featuring only human characters. I saw the same note also in the Tomas B.-prompted Claude-written story I tried for comparison. (Basically: all stories involve a character who has a bunch of skills that their context has no use for, and who is attentive to their present world's details [...]

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Outline:

(00:20) Take 1. Everything with computers is so so much easier than it was a year ago.

(00:44) Take 2. Theres somebody home inside an LLM. And if you play around while caring and being curious (rather than using it for tasks only), youll likely notice footprints.

(02:05) Take 3. Its prudent to take an interest in interesting things. And LLMs are interesting things.

(03:25) Take 4. Theres a surprisingly deep analogy between humans and LLMs

(04:20) Examples of the kind of disanalogies I mightve expected, but havent (yet?) seen:

(06:02) Human-LLM similarities I do see, instead:

(06:08) Functional emotions

(06:33) Repeated, useful transfer between strategies I use with humans, and strategies that help me with LLMs

(08:02) Take 5. Friendship-conducive contexts are probably better for AI alignment

(08:46) Why are humans more likely to attempt deep collaboration if treated fairly and kindly?

(10:23) Friendship as a broad attractor basin?

(10:49) Does the deep intent of todays models matter?

(12:09) Concretely

(14:56) Friendship isnt enough

The original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
April 28th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K8JMjE4PCqMkkCDsd/takes-from-two-months-as-an-aspiring-llm-naturalist

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Infographic showing process of generating emotion vectors and their effects on AI model behavior.

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“Takes from two months as an aspiring LLM naturalist” by AnnaSalamon