Related papers: Agency at the Interface: Distinguishing Teleologic…

I discuss three aspects of the notion of agency from the standpoint of physics: (i) what makes a physical system an agent; (ii) the reason for agency's time orientation; (iii) the source of the information generated in choosing an action. I…

To operate reliably under changing conditions, complex systems require feedback on how effectively they use resources, not just whether objectives are met. Current AI systems process vast information to produce sophisticated predictions,…

Defining agency is an extremely important challenge for cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Physics generally describes mechanical happenings, but there remains an unbridgeable gap between these and the acts of agents. To discuss…

This paper addresses the critical challenge of mesa-optimization in AI safety by providing a formal definition of agency and a framework for its analysis. Agency is conceptualized as a Continuous Representation of accumulated experience…

The proliferation of agentic artificial intelligence has outpaced the conceptual tools needed to characterize agency in computational systems. Prevailing definitions mainly rely on autonomy and goal-directedness. Here, we argue for a…

Self-organization is a process where a stable pattern is formed by the cooperative behavior between parts of an initially disordered system without external control or influence. It has been introduced to multi-agent systems as an internal…

As intelligent systems are developed across diverse substrates - from machine learning models and neuromorphic hardware to in vitro neural cultures - understanding what gives a system agency has become increasingly important. Existing…

Autonomous agentic systems are increasingly deployed in regulated, high-stakes domains where decisions may be irreversible and institutionally constrained. Existing safety approaches emphasize alignment, interpretability, or action-level…

Agency is a system's capacity to steer outcomes toward a goal, and is a central topic of study across biology, philosophy, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. Determining if a system exhibits agency is a notoriously difficult…

Nature can be seen as informational structure with computational dynamics (info-computationalism), where an (info-computational) agent is needed for the potential information of the world to actualize. Starting from the definition of…

The concept of autonomy is fundamental for understanding biological organization and the evolutionary transitions of living systems. Understanding how a system constitutes itself as an individual, cohesive, self-organized entity is a…

This paper develops a control-theoretic framework for analyzing agentic systems embedded within feedback control loops, where an AI agent may adapt controller parameters, select among control strategies, invoke external tools, reconfigure…

This paper proposes self-organization as a method to improve the efficiency and adaptability of bureaucracies and similar social systems. Bureaucracies are described as networks of agents, where the main design principle is to reduce local…

Autonomous AI is no longer a hard-to-reach concept, it enables the agents to move beyond executing tasks to independently addressing complex problems, adapting to change while handling the uncertainty of the environment. However, what makes…

We claim that it is possible to have artificial software agents for which their actions and the world they inhabit have first-person or intrinsic meanings. The first-person or intrinsic meaning of an entity to a system is defined as its…

This article presents a formal model demonstrating that genuine autonomy, the ability of a system to self-regulate and pursue objectives, fundamentally implies computational unpredictability from an external perspective. we establish…

Criticality has been proposed as a key principle underlying complex behavior in biological and artificial systems; however, how criticality translates from individual dynamics to collective behavior remains unclear. We study this question…

Agentic AI seeks to endow systems with sustained autonomy, reasoning, and interaction capabilities. To realize this vision, its assumptions about agency must be complemented by explicit models of cognition, cooperation, and governance. This…

We present the notion of explainability for decision-making processes in a pedagogically structured autonomous environment. Multi-agent systems that are structured pedagogically consist of pedagogical teachers and learners that operate in…

This paper is an invited layperson summary for The Academic of the paper referenced on the last page. We summarize how the formal framework of autocatalytic networks offers a means of modeling the origins of self-organizing, self-sustaining…