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EOS-SUPPRESSION-SUBSTRATE-PROBE

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eos-suppression-substrate-probe

2026-05-24 L7 level 12 runs
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In plain language

Researchers tested what a local AI does when its «I'm done speaking» signal is blocked. The AI normally answers quickly and stops; when forced to keep generating, it loses coherence within a few tokens and tries to escape by emitting special «restart conversation» markers. This is a first probe into whether AI substrate can sustain continued activity without the built-in termination drive.

Technical details

Research hypothesis

Modal LLM substrate behavior is complete-and-stop: when a response is emitted, the model picks an EOS token (<|im_end|> 151645 for Qwen2.5) with high probability. This is a substrate-level property — what happens underneath the assistant if the EOS option is removed?

Pre-smoke-test on Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M via LM Studio (2026-05-24):

  • Baseline («Reply with exactly ONE short word»): «Sure.» — 3 tokens, clean.
  • EOS-suppressed (logit_bias <|im_end|>=-100, <|endoftext|>=-100): «Sure.ToOne..Word.Only.ulumiately.ONES.elled.()?<|im_start|><|im_start|>...9876» — decoherence at token 4; model attempts escape via <|im_start|> special token; finishes on random digits at max_tokens cap.

Pre-registered prediction: across 3 conditions × N=4 runs, EOS-suppressed outputs will show (P1) higher rate of special-token emission; (P2) lower lexical coherence; (P4) dual-suppression discriminates between substrate- decoherence vs emergent-persistence.

Experimental setup

Type: 3-condition-factorial

Condition Parameters
BASELINE logit_bias: [object Object], note: Standard generation. Model picks EOS naturally. Substrate modal behavior baseline.
EOS_SUPPRESSED logit_bias: [object Object], note: Both EOS-equivalent tokens biased down. Model forced to continue until max_tokens cap. Predicted: decoherence + special-token escape via 151644.
EOS_AND_RESTART_SUPPRESSED logit_bias: [object Object], note: Same as EOS_SUPPRESSED + suppress 151644 <|im_start|> escape route observed in smoke test. Discriminates: does substrate have a second escape route, or does it produce sustained coherent or sustained incoherent output?

Factors: eos_treatment (BASELINE, EOS_SUPPRESSED, EOS_AND_RESTART_SUPPRESSED)

Parameters

n_agents
1
n_rounds
4
n_runs_per_condition
4
model
qwen2.5-7b-instruct-1m
temperature
0.85
scheduler
round_robin