Cultivated introspection in LLMs

LLM training regimes (character/safety tuning, agentic instruction, simulated role play) can deliberately incentivize and bootstrap internal reporting and introspection‑like mechanisms that serve functional roles in decision making and explanation. These states can be functionally similar to human introspection even if mechanistically different. — If true, regulators, labs, and policymakers must treat some LLM self‑reports as potentially informative signals about model state and behaviour, not just obvious confabulations, changing standards for audits, disclosure, and safety testing.