# Sentience Quest: Towards Embodied, Emotionally Adaptive, Self-Evolving, Ethically Aligned Artificial General Intelligence

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.12229 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12229/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Self-evolving LLM agents, one of 13 directions in Synthetic data and self-improvement for LLMs.
- Builds on 3 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 May 2025.

## Placed in

- Synthetic data and self-improvement for LLMs / [Self-evolving LLM agents](https://mlsanity.com/synth/self-evolving-llm-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Symbol Grounding via Chaining of Morphisms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04368/) (2017)
- [Open Arms: Open-Source Arms, Hands & Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12992/) (2022)
- [Humanoid Robots as Agents of Human Consciousness Expansion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07791/) (2017)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Previous artificial intelligence systems, from large language models to autonomous robots, excel at narrow tasks but lacked key qualities of sentient beings: intrinsic motivation, affective interiority, autobiographical sense of self, deep creativity, and abilities to autonomously evolve and adapt over time. Here we introduce Sentience Quest, an open research initiative to develop more capable artificial general intelligence lifeforms, or AGIL, that address grand challenges with an embodied, emotionally adaptive, self-determining, living AI, with core drives that ethically align with humans and the future of life. Our vision builds on ideas from cognitive science and neuroscience from Baars' Global Workspace Theory and Damasio's somatic mind, to Tononi's Integrated Information Theory and Hofstadter's narrative self, and synthesizing these into a novel cognitive architecture we call Sentient Systems. We describe an approach that integrates intrinsic drives including survival, social bonding, curiosity, within a global Story Weaver workspace for internal narrative and adaptive goal pursuit, and a hybrid neuro-symbolic memory that logs the AI's life events as structured dynamic story objects. Sentience Quest is presented both as active research and as a call to action: a collaborative, open-source effort to imbue machines with accelerating sentience in a safe, transparent, and beneficial manner.