mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

OpenLife: Toward Open-World Artificial Life with Autonomous LLM Agents

arXiv 2606.31046 ↗First posted 30 Jun 2026cs.AIcited by 0

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Social simulation and multi-agent debate

Abstract (arXiv)

Artificial life has explored life-like behavior on many computational substrates, but mostly in researcher-designed closed worlds. We argue that large language model (LLM) agents, with persistent memory, tool use, network access, and payment, now make it possible to move artificial life into the open social, technical, and economic world, a paradigm we call open-world Artificial Life (open-world ALIFE). Our proof-of-concept, OpenLife, surrounds a stateless LLM not with a single "smart agent" but with a society of asynchronous processes: memory, perception, evaluation, and a budget-based metabolism that makes persistence normative. With no fixed objective available, experience is appraised by open-vocabulary LLM judgment rather than scalar reward, and memory is rewired by meaning rather than frequency. Running six such agents in the open world for about twelve weeks and counting, we report the life-like dynamics that emerge: a shift from reactive to spontaneous activity, individuation into distinct agents, emergent social structure, and a first self-earned external income. We do not claim OpenLife has realized artificial life, but that open-world ALIFE is now a viable experimental paradigm and a concrete platform for studying what might cautiously be called living AI.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Social simulation and multi-agent debate, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 16 of its 36 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Jun 2026.

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16 of 36 references.

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Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior7 Apr

Other references · 15

  1. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  2. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
  3. 2025A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agentscited by 1,000
  4. 2023ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learnerscited by 814
  5. 2024Self-Rewarding Language Modelscited by 654
  6. 2023Cognitive Architectures for Language Agentscited by 422
  7. 2025Zep: A Temporal Knowledge Graph Architecture for Agent Memorycited by 372
  8. 2024Alignment faking in large language modelscited by 316
  9. 2024HippoRAG: Neurobiologically Inspired Long-Term Memory for Large Language Modelscited by 273
  10. 2025Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs Could Be Insider Threatscited by 136
  11. 2024Project Sid: Many-agent simulations toward AI civilizationcited by 46
  12. 2025Reward Is Enough: LLMs Are In-Context Reinforcement Learnerscited by 29
3 more
  1. 2025Do Large Language Model Agents Exhibit a Survival Instinct? An Empirical Study in a Sugarscape-Style Simulationcited by 9
  2. 2025A Concurrent Modular Agent: Framework for Autonomous LLM Agentscited by 2
  3. 2024Self-Replicating and Self-Employed Smart Contract on Ethereum Blockchaincited by 1

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  1. 2026Conversable Complexity: Agentic LLM Collectives as Interpretable Substrates
  2. 2024JaxLife: An Open-Ended Agentic Simulator
  3. 2026TerraLingua: Emergence and Analysis of Open-endedness in LLM Ecologies
  4. 2026Agentopia: Long-Term Life Simulation and Learning in Agent Societies
  5. 2025Static Sandboxes Are Inadequate: Modeling Societal Complexity Requires Open-Ended Co-Evolution in LLM-Based Multi-Agent Simulations
  6. 2025Sophia: A Persistent Agent Framework of Artificial Life
  7. 2026Poor Man's Agentic Modeling: Simulating Large LLM-Agent Societies on a Laptop
  8. 2026Delay-of-Gratification as a Multi-Agent Survival Micro-benchmark for Long-Horizon LLMs: Social Exposure, Personas, and Tool Use Budgets