Evidence of an Emergent "Self" in Continual Robot Learning
A key challenge to understanding self-awareness has been a principled way of quantifying whether an intelligent system has a concept of a "self", and if so how to differentiate the "self" from other cognitive structures. We propose that the "self" can be isolated by seeking the invariant portion of cognitive process that changes relatively little compared to more rapidly acquired cognitive skills - because our self is the most persistent aspect of our experiences. We used this principle to analyze the cognitive structure of robots under two conditions: One robot learns a constant task, while a second undergoes continual learning under variable tasks. We find that robots subjected to conti...
| Authors | Adidev Jhunjhunwala, Judah Goldfeder, Hod Lipson |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.RO |
| Published | 25 March 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 12 June 2026 |
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