Don't think of LLMs as entities but as simulators. For example, when exploring a topic, don't ask: "What do you think about xyz"? There is no "you". Next time try: "What would be a good group of people to explore xyz? What would they say?" The LLM can channel/simulate many perspectives but it hasn't "thought about" xyz for a while and over time and formed its own opinions in the way we're used to. If you force it via the use of "you", it will give you something by adopting a personality embedding vector implied by the statistics of its finetuning data and then simulate that. It's fine to do, but there is a lot less mystique to it than I find people naively attribute to "asking an AI".

Agency > Intelligence I had this intuitively wrong for decades, I think due to a pervasive cultural veneration of intelligence, various entertainment/media, obsession with IQ etc. Agency is significantly more powerful and significantly more scarce. Are you hiring for agency? Are we educating for agency? Are you acting as if you had 10X agency? Grok explanation is ~close: “Agency, as a personality trait, refers to an individual's capacity to take initiative, make decisions, and exert control over their actions and environment. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive—someone with high agency doesn’t just let life happen to them; they shape it. Think of it as a blend of self-efficacy, determination, and a sense of ownership over one’s path. People with strong agency tend to set goals and pursue them with confidence, even in the face of obstacles. They’re the type to say, “I’ll figure it out,” and then actually do it. On the flip side, someone low in agency might feel more like a passenger in their own life, waiting for external forces—like luck, other people, or circumstances—to dictate what happens next. It’s not quite the same as assertiveness or ambition, though it can overlap. Agency is quieter, more internal—it’s the belief that you *can* act, paired with the will to follow through. Psychologists often tie it to concepts like locus of control: high-agency folks lean toward an internal locus, feeling they steer their fate, while low-agency folks might lean external, seeing life as something that happens *to* them.”