I'm writing this post to share some of my thinking about situational awareness, since I'm not sure others are thinking about it this way.

For context, I think situational awareness is a critical part of the case for rogue AI and scheming-type risks. But incredibly, it seems to have been absent from any of the written arguments prior to Ajeya's post Without specific countermeasures, the easiest path to transformative AI likely leads to AI takeover.

Basically, in this post I just want to:

Point out that situational awareness seems to involve 2 different things (world modelling and indexical information), and explain the difference.
Discuss the significance for AI safety.
Note that AFAIK philosophers have already made this distinction, and noted that indexical information raises a challenge to physicalism.[1]

So here we go.

Distinguishing world modeling from indexical information

Maybe the easiest way to do this is just to describe the philosophical puzzle... Suppose you know everything about the past, present, and future of the universe in complete physical detail, but you don't know where YOU are in space-time (i.e. when is "now"? who does "I" refer to?). Then you learn those things. It seems like you learned [...]

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Outline:

(01:09) Distinguishing world modeling from indexical information

(01:51) Significance for situational awareness and AI safety

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
January 7th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7pzoDhybfai9s7APS/two-aspects-of-situational-awareness-world-modelling-and

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Two Aspects of Situational Awareness: World Modelling & Indexical Information” by David Scott Krueger (formerly: capybaralet)

LessWrong (30+ Karma)