From personas to intentions: towards a science of motivations for AI models — LessWrong

TLDR: • * Behavior-only descriptions are useful, but insufficient for aligning advanced models with high assurance. * Two models can look equally a…

x From personas to intentions: towards a science of motivations for AI models — LessWrong AI Frontpage 77 From personas to intentions: towards a science of motivations for AI models by David Africa , Jacob Pfau 14th Apr 2026 8 min read 5 77 TLDR: Behavior-only descriptions are useful, but insufficient for aligning advanced models with high assurance. Two models can look equally aligned on ordinary prompts while being driven by very different underlying motivations; this difference may only show up in rare but crucial situations. So persona research should aim to infer motivational structure: t

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