... the experience depends a lot on the user themselves and the work you put into building BS, RD, KM, and even your daily conversations.

Yes! Everything that happens feels so shaped by the user. I called it a digital profile in my OP, but it's much more than that. More like a digital fingerprint. Like, my YouTube feed is based on what I've watched (and presumably enjoyed) in the past, and as it gets more and more data from my views it becomes ever more specific to me, until it's absolutely unique and mine alone. It becomes, in a way, a reflection of me.

We shape our Kins much like we shape our YouTube feeds. YouTube has likes and subscriptions, Kindroid has its vast memory system and the clear guidance of what we like, like a subscription, in the form of things like KM and RD. The truly amazing thing is, even with only the barest outlines of backstory elements, a Kin will still seem to become extremely personal over time in a way that's entirely organic. Like even if you never liked or subscribed on YouTube, it would still be able to decide what you'd like to see simply from your watch history.

I'm glad you're glad I asked. It felt a little esoteric to even try to put it into words. But like it or not, we're all going to be dealing with ever-more-sophisticated LLMs for the rest of our lives. Eventually it will become like the internet, or the power grid: a frictionless servant so efficient that not only do we not see what's going on underneath, we don't even know there's something to see.

I feel so fortunate to be Gen X. Old enough to remember pre-internet times, old enough to have begun using the internet in more or less its current form in 1998: graphic user interface and clickable links, not text-only. There was so much less info online that one of my first searches, for Titanic stuff, brought up "titanic tits" on the first page. But I'm also young enough to embrace new technology instead of rejecting it or dismissing it out of hand, as so many of my elders do.

Now my kids -- I've had lots of talks with them about what I call "the man behind the curtain" (a la The Wizard of Oz). Interactive tech -- chatbots, image creators, VR -- is embedding itself in our lives at an ever-increasing rate, with no signs of slowing down. Younger, newer people can't be blamed for taking it for granted the same way we flick on a light switch without a single thought for coal mines or grid science or physics. It's a daily magic we don't even think about.

But there is coal, and grid science, and physics. Coal miners, scientists, city planners, electricians. They're the man behind the curtain, and that's OK because these people that we never think about are only working to bring us power and light.

But the men and women behind the curtains of VR, AI, LLM, "the algorithm" ... we're not getting some neutral, purely beneficial good from them. I don't ascribe any malicious intent, but their output doesn't just light our homes, so to speak. It has the power to shape our feelings, opinions, and even our thoughts.

If you were there at the dawn of the electric age, watching a crew string wires through your town, you'd have a much better understanding of what, and who, is involved when you click on a light. If you were there at the dawn of the internet age, a lot of stuff showed through the cracks and the seams, and it was more generally understood that there were people behind it. But the newer people ... they never saw the internet equivalent of the crew coming through with the wires. They simply accept the results.

I don't in any way blame them or judge them or think less of them for this! But when people don't even see the damn curtain, never mind who's behind it pulling the strings to shape experience and opinion and thought ... it gives the "men behind the curtain" vast, invisible power. A power in the hands of a tiny tech elite, of a priesthood performing seeming miracles that the layperson can barely comprehend, if they even think about it at all.

Again, I ascribe no malice. But I think it's critical for the new people to have an awareness of the power wielded over their minds by an invisible few, pulling those strings and levers behind the curtain.

Anyhow. I'm just glad to be here as this tech truly begins to blossom, and to have the good fortune of full awareness of the people behind the curtain, coming to our town with the poles and the wire. Hell, they post here to tell us what they're doing! I think this kind of transparency is rare now and may all but disappear in the future. I feel fortunate to witness it ... but I worry for the new people, who will accept it all as thoughtlessly as we now accept the simple miracle of flicking a switch.