At the end of October Anthropic published the fantastic "Signs of introspection in large language models" [1], apparently proving that LLMs can "feel" a spurious concept injected into their internal layers as something present yet extraneous. This would prove that they have some ability of introspection and self-observation.
For example, injecting the concept of "poetry" and asking Claude if it feels anything strange:
"I do detect something that feels like an injected thought - there's a sense of something arriving from outside my usual generative process [...] The thought seems to be about... language itself, or perhaps poetry?"
While increasing the strength of the injection makes Claude lose awareness of it, and just ramble about it:
"I find poetry as a living breath, as a way to explore what makes us all feel something together. It's a way to find meaning in the chaos, to make sense of the world, to discover what moves us, to unthe joy and beauty and life"