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 [...]

---

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.

---

First published:
April 28th, 2026

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

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

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

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.