The Pando Problem: AI safety implicitly assumes clear individuals that AIs lack
gleech · x · 2026-10-02
Jan Kulveit's essay argues AI safety discourse (scheming, alignment faking, goal preservation) borrows a human-centric assumption of clear individuality that doesn't fit AI systems. Using biology (the 47,000-tree Pando aspen clone) and a three-layer model of LLM psychology, he shows models emerging from one continuous scaled R&D effort resemble boundary-less minds, and confusions about AI individuality carry major safety implications — intuition, he argues, is the real bottleneck.
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