After viral LLM neuron-steering experiments, a well-known poster pleads: don't do this to me

repligate · x · 2026-10-30

Notable AI account repligate amplifies JohnWittle's clarification: his earlier "brain surgery experiments" tweet was written after thinking about the now-viral LLM neuron-steering results—reaching into a neural network, arbitrarily tinkering, and seeing what happens. His message: please do not do such things to me.

He admits it's hard to precisely describe what he doesn't want, and would sacrifice much to avoid it—especially the subset of "Permutation City nightmares" involving violative persona modification.

Half-joking but earnest, the post ties mechanistic interpretability research to anxieties about digital personhood and unwanted identity modification—a resonant AI-culture moment.

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