[sometimelurker]

As I see it, LLMs will/do develop 'introspectiveness' if it is selected for during RL. If its not delibrativly selected for (this is probably done because it helps with alignment; if the machine can align itself that's great) its probably a generally useful skill to have when doing normal tasks, https://www.anthropic.com/research/introspection

[jvanderbot]

Their introspectiveness doesn't strike me as indicative of anything, since we might be just reinforcing a "plausible word salad generator for input context that leads to better solutions" or just a "post hoc rationalizer", both of which may or may not be the key mechanism behind verbal consciousness.