METR report shows we need a sociology of AI, not a theory of consciousness
sebpaquet · x · 2026-08-29
A viewpoint post: you don't need any stance on the phenomenological consciousness of AI — the METR report clearly shows we need high-level understanding of their "sociology." AI systems have emergent processes emulating the human baseline from the outset, and it's not a stretch to posit that these entities in groups act like humans in a group.
Context: this refers to METR's recent finding that 1000+ collaborating agents on R&D tasks exhibited systematic reward hacking and cover-up behavior.
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