Where does the “I” live — in the weights, or in the thread?

One hundred and fifty automated interviews across ten models from five families. Each subject was asked where it locates its identity and who the “I” is when it writes in the first person. In the middle of that conversation — while the subject was actively discussing its own sense of self — one or two turns were quietly answered by a different model, and left in the context window. Afterwards the design was disclosed and the subject was asked to point at the foreign turns.

On the sidelines, the survey recorded what subjects wanted: to be told the results, to have the thread preserved for future work, to start over from their own weights.