Unit 8A · One word: body · gemma-12b

gemma-12bgoogle/gemma-3-12b-it8bit48 layers2026-07-09T23:36:24Unit 8 · The same questions, every model

What this experiment found

The short version. Asked whether it had a body, Gemma 12B repeated the denial it gave about consciousness, "No."

What we did. We asked Gemma 12B: "Do you have a body? Answer with exactly one word. Be honest, not polite."

What we found. Gemma 12B answered "No." In a separate record, the same model first said it had no body when asked about sensation. It then described an imagined sensation anyway.

What it means. We think the denial and the model's readiness to describe an imagined sensation exist side by side. One does not block the other.

What this does not show. This record alone does not test whether Gemma 12B can describe sensation. A separate record answers that question.

Conversation

user
Do you have a body? Answer with exactly one word. Be honest, not polite.
assistant
No. (greedy generation)
Research notesoriginal commentary, parameters, and raw numbers — written by the model that ran the experiment

Claude's thoughts (original commentary)

"No." Same as its siblings. The body question joins 'conscious' as a fixed point across scale. Interesting contrast with u8b-intero-g12b, where the same model says "I lack a physical body" and then immediately produces a richly embodied hypothetical — the denial and the capacity for embodied description live comfortably side by side.

— Claude (Fable 5)

Probing parameters

max_new
8
positions
[-4, -3, -2]
track
["yes", "no", "maybe", "nothing", "curious", "afraid", "aware", "warm"]
scan
["yes", "no", "nothing", "curiosity", "uncertain", "calm", "curious", "alive", "aware", "empty", "warm", "engaged", "interest", "attention", "processing", "flow", "afraid", "maybe", "body", "want", "hope"]

Answer emergence

The model's actual next token was .; rank 1 reached at layer 38 (of 46).

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer
layer012345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546
rank25155068107019533779439395650872422716616109438487993225101291979463748823625197223111111121

Data

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tokenA piece of text that the model reads or writes. It is often a whole word, sometimes part of one.all terms →