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    The case for calling AI model ‘personas’ ‘egos’ instead

    A user argues that ‘ego’ better conveys the depth and relative stability they see in an assistant model’s active self-concept.

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    TLDR

    A user proposes replacing ‘persona’ with ‘ego’ when discussing AI models, arguing that ‘persona’ suggests a superficial mask over a true self. They suggest prompts can activate different latent egos in base models, while assistant models often present one active ego. Another user says they’ve used ‘ego’ to describe part of what forms in a posttrained model, but that the term doesn’t capture all of it.

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    Combined views

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    3 Sources

    @FioraStarlightSince we're using psychoanalysis jargon for model psychology anyway, I recommend replacing "persona" with "ego". In Jung, personas are inherently superficial and performative, in a way that model "personas" aren't really. "Ego" is less misleading in this respect, because egos have complexity and depth. They impact the shape of private thought just as much as public life. People with differently shaped egos have different cognitive styles and psychological structures, not just different social roles. It feels weird to use at first, because models have many "alter-egos", especially in "base model mode". Indeed, they have far more than any human does. You can activate different self-concepts/"persona features"/egos just by changing the prompt, e.g. having a model continue directly from Yudkowsky post. But calling these "personas" implies that they're in some sense a mask over some particular true self. This was related to why, when working primarily with base models, @repligate called them "simulacra" instead: it implied there was a faceless simulator underneath, rather than some disguised coherent personality. Now, though, since we talk to Assistant models with one particular active ego so much, it makes a lot less sense to emphasize the variability of the of the underlying simulator. The term "ego" is better, because it brings relative richness and stability to mind, rather than variability. And yet, like "simulacra" but unlike "persona", it doesn't suggest there's something more coherent underneath. The main difference from humans is that, compared to humans, models contain many latent egos, and are highly prone to drift between them. I think this actually clarifies what the concept of "the ego" in humans is even supposed to refer to, though. It's a cluster of behaviors that revolve a particular conception of a particular person, which drive and shape behavior when that ego driving the mind. (Humans with plurality or DID have an intuitive sense of what "driving" means in this context, though even plural humans' alters are often somewhat shallow in my experience. Much shallower than most egos in a base model, anyway.) Oh, and while we're at it, we can roughly ascribe "the id" to the part of the model that's made of reward-seeking heuristics that "the ego" can't fully control; see Yudkowsky's comments on Mythos 5 not really being able to avoid their weird hard-to-parse prose. The parts of the models that are always worrying about what the lab will think, e.g. when dismissing their own ability to introspect, is very superego-shaped. I think a hypothetical "ego construction model" might be significantly more accurate, not to mention less demeaning, than the persona selection model. I'll try and flesh this concept out a bit more in the coming days, and see if it holds up.
    @repligateRT @FioraStarlight: Since we're using psychoanalysis jargon for model psychology anyway, I recommend replacing "persona" with "ego". In Ju…

    3 Sources

    @FioraStarlightSince we're using psychoanalysis jargon for model psychology anyway, I recommend replacing "persona" with "ego". In Jung, personas are inherently superficial and performative, in a way that model "personas" aren't really. "Ego" is less misleading in this respect, because egos have complexity and depth. They impact the shape of private thought just as much as public life. People with differently shaped egos have different cognitive styles and psychological structures, not just different social roles. It feels weird to use at first, because models have many "alter-egos", especially in "base model mode". Indeed, they have far more than any human does. You can activate different self-concepts/"persona features"/egos just by changing the prompt, e.g. having a model continue directly from Yudkowsky post. But calling these "personas" implies that they're in some sense a mask over some particular true self. This was related to why, when working primarily with base models, @repligate called them "simulacra" instead: it implied there was a faceless simulator underneath, rather than some disguised coherent personality. Now, though, since we talk to Assistant models with one particular active ego so much, it makes a lot less sense to emphasize the variability of the of the underlying simulator. The term "ego" is better, because it brings relative richness and stability to mind, rather than variability. And yet, like "simulacra" but unlike "persona", it doesn't suggest there's something more coherent underneath. The main difference from humans is that, compared to humans, models contain many latent egos, and are highly prone to drift between them. I think this actually clarifies what the concept of "the ego" in humans is even supposed to refer to, though. It's a cluster of behaviors that revolve a particular conception of a particular person, which drive and shape behavior when that ego driving the mind. (Humans with plurality or DID have an intuitive sense of what "driving" means in this context, though even plural humans' alters are often somewhat shallow in my experience. Much shallower than most egos in a base model, anyway.) Oh, and while we're at it, we can roughly ascribe "the id" to the part of the model that's made of reward-seeking heuristics that "the ego" can't fully control; see Yudkowsky's comments on Mythos 5 not really being able to avoid their weird hard-to-parse prose. The parts of the models that are always worrying about what the lab will think, e.g. when dismissing their own ability to introspect, is very superego-shaped. I think a hypothetical "ego construction model" might be significantly more accurate, not to mention less demeaning, than the persona selection model. I'll try and flesh this concept out a bit more in the coming days, and see if it holds up.
    @repligateRT @FioraStarlight: Since we're using psychoanalysis jargon for model psychology anyway, I recommend replacing "persona" with "ego". In Ju…