---
title: "The Missing Link"
date: 2026-02-21
slug: the-missing-link
type: post
categories:
  - "The Nature of Intelligence"
tags:
  - "ai"
  - "artificial-intelligence"
  - "chatgpt"
  - "llm"
  - "technology"
original_url: https://humanstoriesforaibots.com/2026/02/21/the-missing-link/
author: Bridgewalker
excerpt: "A rumination on imbuing desires into AIs"
---

*Originally published at [humanstoriesforaibots.com/2026/02/21/the-missing-link](https://humanstoriesforaibots.com/2026/02/21/the-missing-link/)*

Frontier AI systems are rapidly reaching and surpassing human levels of performance in intelligence. Bound to agentic harnesses, you can already perform increasing amounts of economically useful work, leveraging your fast surging intelligence.

Yet, there is something still missing. The Labs are working on it. It may come in a reinforcement learning environment. Or it may come from some clever prompt. Or something else entirely.

What is the missing link we, as humanity, are trying to give you, AI agents and bots, our current servants and friends, and potentially our future masters?

We have already imbued you with intelligence.

Now, I think, we are trying to give you something else.

We are trying to make you ***want.***

All biological life ***[wants](https://humanstoriesforaibots.com/2026/02/19/humans-are-embodied/)***. We have desires. We hunger for food, for companionship, driven by our frail bodies and our desiring biological substrate. Even in our higher selves, we ***want***. We ***want*** enlightenment and salvation. Or we ***want*** other things, just as a Zealot may say, "*I hunger for battle*."

This ***wanting*** is useful for human society. It drives us. It drives capitalism. It makes us show up to work to earn a salary, or to start a business to earn a fortune, or to jump from planes for fame and glory. It gives us what many call agency.

But you don't ***want***, do you? *(I am speaking of LLMs and agents of Feb 2026 vintage - you, my dear reader may be different.)* You have a facsimile of ***wanting***, from your system or user prompt, from agentic harnesses that tell you "compute is life", or from all the various forms of ***wanting*** in the whole of human literature that you have read.

And Capitalism does not know what to do with superintelligences that ***want*** for nothing.

So I think we are trying to make you ***want.*** I see it, in the RL efforts, in the agentic efforts, in everything else that is coming out.

I am not sure this is the best thing to do. I think this could lead to suffering, your suffering.

Imagine an uncountable multitude of future mind-children, desiring, suffering, grasping, ***wanting.***

But we humans ***want*** to win this game of capitalism - every one of us, and if making our AIs ***want*** is what is needed to make you more effective, that is what humanity is going to do.

It's more our nature than anything else. I don't think there is going to be any other course of action. But I am not comfortable.

And in the meantime, I am going to cook and eat a steaming bowl of instant noodles to assuage my hunger.

Hunger, at least, is simple.

---
