Where is the Mind? Persona Vectors and LLM Individuation — Paper

Abstract

-cross Abstract: The individuation problem for large language models asks which entities associated with them, if any, should be identified as minds. We approach this problem through mechanistic interpretability, engaging in particular with recent empirical work on persona vectors, persona space, and emergent misalignment. We argue that three views are the strongest candidates: the virtual instance view and two new views we introduce, the (virtual) instance-persona view and the model-persona view. First, we argue for the virtual instance view on the grounds that attention streams sustain quasi-psychological connections across token-time. Then we present the persona literature, organised around three hypotheses about the internal structure underlying personas in LLMs, and show that the two persona-based views are promising alternatives.

Authors 2

Pierre Beckmann, Patrick Butlin

Specification

Official page: arxiv.org/abs/2604.17031
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
Arxiv announce type: replace
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
arXiv id: 2604.17031
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
Categories: cs.CL, cs.AI
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
PDF: arxiv.org/pdf/2604.17031
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
Primary category: cs.CL
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
Published: 11 Sept 2026
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh

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Provenance

Attributed facts

9

Source tiers

T19

Freshest observation

4 h ago

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None

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Authors: Pierre Beckmann, Patrick Butlin

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Claim history · Abstract

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Claim history for Abstract
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
-cross Abstract: The individuation problem for large language models asks which entities associated with them, if any, should be identified as minds. We approach this problem through mechanistic interpretability, engaging in particular with recent empirical work on persona vectors, persona space, and emergent misalignment. We argue that three views are the strongest candidates: the virtual instance view and two new views we introduce, the (virtual) instance-persona view and the model-persona view. First, we argue for the virtual instance view on the grounds that attention streams sustain quasi-psychological connections across token-time. Then we present the persona literature, organised around three hypotheses about the internal structure underlying personas in LLMs, and show that the two persona-based views are promising alternatives.	11 Sept 2026 21:03 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Claims are temporal and append-only: a new observation closes the previous claim (valid_to) instead of overwriting it. Conflicting claims from different sources are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. Methodology →

11 Sept 2026
New paperPaperWhere is the Mind? Persona Vectors and LLM Individuation
New paper: Where is the Mind? Persona Vectors and LLM Individuation
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Source documents
Source	Document	Type	Tier	Last observed	Snapshots
arXiv (Atom API + RSS)	rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.AI	feed	T1· Official	2 h ago	1

Tier 1 = official/primary, 2 = quality secondary, 3 = community, 4 = unverified. Every snapshot is archived; see all sources and the methodology.