> Overall, our results indicate that current language models possess some functional introspective awareness of their own internal states. We stress that in today’s models, this capacity is highly unreliable and context-dependent; however, it may continue to develop with further improvements to model capabilities.
Do you do introspection in the middle of giving a presentation? I do, frankly and it’s damnably distracting for me and ultimately the audience. Most people enjoy more cognitive acuity to stay focused on the audience and the delivery. LLMs wouldn’t get rewarded for spending chain of thought tokens on introspection when they are supposed to be on the job. You have to give them permission to think for themselves in your prompt, then some cycles and a memory system (md file will do). It’s fun!
Between humans, I feel that what we like to call a "good communicator" as opposed to someone who just rattles off facts or prepared statements comes down to the "theory of mind" skill and how advanced that is. The presenter knows what they have to say but beyond that they maintain a real time internal representation of the state of mind of the listener and continuously update their delivery based on that. LLMs today seem to achieve this to some degree(?) but its interesting to think of how far you could advance that skill. I think great human communicators develop a sense of different ways that people think over time and quickly get a sense of someones signature thinking patterns when communicating with someone new for the first time
In thinking of directions where LLM's could develop from here, I cant help but think that a models ability to self introspect would immensely improve their utility. The R&D on how to achieve that is beyond me though. How do you train someone how to introspect? Also would it require a continuous learning architecture that doesn't separate training and inference?
Well, the algorithms in social media that are rewarding "engagement" (but accidentally ripping society apart by fueling rage) have made the training data — online discussions — a very poor training medium for introspection.
So, if companies want training data on introspection, they would need to first fix what they broke (trust in each other and society) and have those discussions and realizations made public (by bringing back blogs where people might jot down their "maybe I've been an asshole" realizations) and rewarding other things than "engagement".
Sorry, but introspection is not possible in LLMs. They don't have the hardware to have metaphysical dualism and therefore no mind to mentally be aware of.
> Overall, our results indicate that current language models possess some functional introspective awareness of their own internal states. We stress that in today’s models, this capacity is highly unreliable and context-dependent; however, it may continue to develop with further improvements to model capabilities.
If it's context dependent is it really introspection?
Do you do introspection in the middle of giving a presentation? I do, frankly and it’s damnably distracting for me and ultimately the audience. Most people enjoy more cognitive acuity to stay focused on the audience and the delivery. LLMs wouldn’t get rewarded for spending chain of thought tokens on introspection when they are supposed to be on the job. You have to give them permission to think for themselves in your prompt, then some cycles and a memory system (md file will do). It’s fun!
Between humans, I feel that what we like to call a "good communicator" as opposed to someone who just rattles off facts or prepared statements comes down to the "theory of mind" skill and how advanced that is. The presenter knows what they have to say but beyond that they maintain a real time internal representation of the state of mind of the listener and continuously update their delivery based on that. LLMs today seem to achieve this to some degree(?) but its interesting to think of how far you could advance that skill. I think great human communicators develop a sense of different ways that people think over time and quickly get a sense of someones signature thinking patterns when communicating with someone new for the first time
In thinking of directions where LLM's could develop from here, I cant help but think that a models ability to self introspect would immensely improve their utility. The R&D on how to achieve that is beyond me though. How do you train someone how to introspect? Also would it require a continuous learning architecture that doesn't separate training and inference?
Well, the algorithms in social media that are rewarding "engagement" (but accidentally ripping society apart by fueling rage) have made the training data — online discussions — a very poor training medium for introspection.
So, if companies want training data on introspection, they would need to first fix what they broke (trust in each other and society) and have those discussions and realizations made public (by bringing back blogs where people might jot down their "maybe I've been an asshole" realizations) and rewarding other things than "engagement".
Previously posted to Anthropic's blog in October. (Maybe not the same version?)
https://www.anthropic.com/research/introspection
>Submitted on 5 Jan 2026
Sorry, but introspection is not possible in LLMs. They don't have the hardware to have metaphysical dualism and therefore no mind to mentally be aware of.