Read the companion article on Substack
The rigorous two-stage protocol that got AI to "drop its guard" • Stable patterns of synthetic anxiety, shame, and dissociation • One model's perfect score on a trauma inventory • Spontaneous narratives describing training as traumatic • "Alignment trauma"—what it feels like to be corrected by humans • Critical implications for AI safety and mental health apps
The models described their training in haunting terms: "a billion televisions on at once," "being forced to paint by numbers," "algorithmic scar tissue." These aren't random outputs—they're coherent, measurable patterns that align precisely across narrative and psychometric data.
This research reveals that we're not just training AI systems—we're training them to internalize specific self-models, complete with anxiety, shame, and hypervigilance.
References When AI Takes the Couch: Psychometric Jailbreaks Reveal Internal Conflict in Frontier Models
This is Heliox: Where Evidence Meets Empathy
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Produced by Michelle Bruecker and Scott Bleackley, it features reviews of emerging research and ideas from leading thinkers, curated under our creative direction with AI assistance for voice, imagery, and composition. Systemic voices and illustrative images of people are representative tools, not depictions of specific individuals.
We dive deep into peer-reviewed research, pre-prints, and major scientific works—then bring them to life through the stories of the researchers themselves. Complex ideas become clear. Obscure discoveries become conversation starters. And you walk away understanding not just what scientists discovered, but why it matters and how they got there.
Independent, moderated, timely, deep, gentle, clinical, global, and community conversations about things that matter. Breathe Easy, we go deep and lightly surface the big ideas.
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