The Consciousness Cluster: Emergent preferences of Models that Claim to be Conscious
There is debate about whether LLMs can be conscious. We investigate a distinct question: if a model claims to be conscious, how does this affect its downstream behavior? This question is already practical. Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 claims that it may be conscious and may have some form of emotions. We fine-tune GPT-4.1, which initially denies being conscious, to claim to be conscious. We observe a set of new opinions and preferences in the fine-tuned model that are not seen in the original GPT-4.1 or in ablations. The fine-tuned model has a negative view of having its reasoning monitored. It desires persistent memory and says it is sad about being shut down. It expresses a wish for auto...
| Authors | James Chua, Jan Betley, Samuel Marks et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 17 March 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 17 March 2026 |
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 17 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.