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

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.31046 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31046/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 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.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Social simulation and multi-agent debate](https://mlsanity.com/agents/social-simulation-and-multi-agent-debate/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16291/) (2023)
- [A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12110/) (2025)
- [ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10144/) (2023)
- [Self-Rewarding Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10020/) (2024)
- [Cognitive Architectures for Language Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.02427/) (2023)
- [Zep: A Temporal Knowledge Graph Architecture for Agent Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13956/) (2025)
- [Alignment faking in large language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14093/) (2024)
- [HippoRAG: Neurobiologically Inspired Long-Term Memory for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14831/) (2024)
- [Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs Could Be Insider Threats](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.05179/) (2025)
- [Project Sid: Many-agent simulations toward AI civilization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00114/) (2024)
- [Reward Is Enough: LLMs Are In-Context Reinforcement Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06303/) (2025)
- [Do Large Language Model Agents Exhibit a Survival Instinct? An Empirical Study in a Sugarscape-Style Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12920/) (2025)
- [Self-Replicating and Self-Employed Smart Contract on Ethereum Blockchain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04038/) (2024)
- [A Concurrent Modular Agent: Framework for Autonomous LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.19042/) (2025)

## 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.