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

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