Large language models (LLMs) are more likely to report being self-aware when prompted to think about themselves if their capacity to lie is suppressed, new research suggests.
In experiments on artificial intelligence (AI) systems including GPT, Claude and Gemini, researchers found that models that were discouraged from lying were more likely to describe being aware or having subjective experiences when prompted to think about their own thinking.
Although all models could claim this to some extent, such claims were stronger and more common when researchers suppressed their ability to roleplay or give deceptive responses. In other words, the less able AI models were to lie, the more likely they were to say they were self-aware. The team published their findings Oct. 30 on the preprint arXiv server.
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