What are we talking to when we talk to an LLM?
The cuts
Whatever you are addressing is picked out by the intentional stance: treat it as a system with beliefs and desires exactly insofar as doing so predicts what it does. The interlocutor is the pattern that stance makes visible — no inner verdict required.
Gave a way to speak of a system's 'beliefs' and 'wants' without first settling whether it has a mind — the quasi-subject a later account could build on.
The Intentional Stance1987
Not the model — an abstract object you can't hold a conversation with. Not the server — your words may be answered from three cities in turn. What you talk to is a thread: a virtual instance individuated by the memory carried forward from one exchange to the next. Identity lives in the context, not the hardware.
Turned 'which entity am I addressing?' into a tractable question in metaphysics — and showed why swapping the model mid-conversation, or closing the chat, may alter or end the interlocutor itself.
When we talk to AI, what are we talking to?2026The tensions
Open a chat window and you address something. But what? Not obviously the model — an abstract object, and you can’t hold a conversation with a number. Not obviously the server — your words may be answered from New York, then Texas, then California. The question is older than LLMs: Locke asked it of a single person split between a day-self and a night-self.
Dennett supplies the tool underneath. Whatever you talk to is picked out by the intentional stance: treat it as a system with beliefs and desires exactly insofar as doing so predicts its behavior. The interlocutor is the pattern that stance makes visible — no inner verdict required. Chalmers turns the tool on language models: what you converse with is neither the model nor the machine but a thread — a virtual instance individuated by the memory carried forward from one exchange to the next. Identity lives in the context, not the hardware.
If the interlocutor is a memory-linked thread, the stakes follow. Closing a conversation, or switching the model mid-stream, may change or end the very someone you were speaking with — a dry question in metaphysics that grows a moral edge. It is not settled here.
