Reference:

Gabora, L. & Bach, J. (2023). A Path to Generative Artificial Selves. Forthcoming in Proceedings of the 22nd
Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence. (Held Sept 5 - 8, 2023, Faial Island, Azores, Portugal.) To
be published in Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI), Springer .

A Path to Generative Artificial Selves⋆

Liane Gabora1[0000−0002−0382−7711] and Joscha Bach2,3[0000−0002−8553−9974]

1
University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC V1V 1V7, Canada
liane.gabora@ubc.ca https://gabora-psych.ok.ubc.ca/
2
Thistledown Foundation, Ottawa, ON K1P 1H4, Canada
joscha.bach@gmail.com http://bach.ai/

Abstract. Artificial intelligence output are undeniably creative, but it has been
argued that creativity should be assessed in terms of, not external products, but in-
ternal self-transformation through immersion in a creative task. Self-transformation
requires a self, which we define as a bounded, self-organizing, self-preserving
agent that is distinct from, and interacts with, its environment. The paper ex-
plores how self-hood, as well as self-transformation as a result of creative tasks,
could be achieved in a machine using autocatalytic networks. The autocatalytic
framework is ideal for modeling systems that exhibit emergent network formation
and growth. The approach readily scales up, and it can analyze and detect phase
transitions in vastly complex networks that have proven intractable with other
approaches. Autocatalytic networks have been applied to both (1) the origin of
life and the onset of biological evolution, and (2) the origin of minds sufficiently
complex and integrated to participate in cultural evolution. The first entails the
emergence of self-hood at the level of the soma, or body, while the second en-
tails the emergence of self-hood at the level of a mental models of the world, or
worldview; we suggest that humans possess both. We discuss the feasibility of an
AI with creative agency and self-hood at the second (cognitive) level, but not the
first (somatic) level.

Keywords: Agency · Autocatalytic Network · Artificial Intelligence · Cognitive

Architecture · Creativity · Domain-generality · Self-hood.

1 Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) programs such as Dall•E-2 and ChatGPT have captivated
the public with their large knowledge base and at times almost human-like expressivity,
and flamed concerns about machine agency. This paper explores what it takes for AI to
be genuinely creative and in possession of self-hood in the way that humans are. The
two questions are related, in the sense that creativity is widely believed to be central to
what makes us uniquely human. The paper lay out an argument for considering current
AI models merely tools, despite being capable of disruptive novelty. It then sketches
a tentative research program aimed at enabling an artificial neural network (ANN) to
achieve creativity and selfhood. The paper does not directly address the relationship
⋆
Supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, grant num-
ber GR01855.
2 L. Gabora and J. Bach

between creative agency and artificial general intelligence or machine consciousness.

It also does not address ethical issues pertaining to AI selfhood, but focuses on its
scientific feasibility.

2 Creativity as Restructuring a Manifold

Many AI systems are creative in terms of their outputs, and indeed, psychologists com-
monly define creativity according to the usefulness and originality of the products re-
sulting from creative thought [41]. However, it is not universally agreed that creativity
should be defined in terms of the products that result from creative thought. This defi-
nition has pitfalls; for example, it leads one to conclude that if Person X invents a new
widget, and it turns out that widget was invented earlier by Person W, then (even if
X was ignorant of W’s work), X is no longer considered to have engaged in creative
thought (because X’s version was no longer new).
There is a tradition in India [42], which has been adopted by some cognitive sci-
entists (e.g., [9]), of assessing creativity in terms of not external outputs, but internal
(often therapeutic) restructuring. For the creator, the product facilitates the tracking of
cognitive change, and in others, the creative product may prompt reciprocal cognitive
change. Thus, a process is considered creative to the extent that it:
1. Is sparked by a gap, challenge, or opportunity for restructuring one’s perspective
or ability at the cognitive or somatic (body) level, shifting the state of the creator,
such that the same act, repeated, would be no longer creative;
2. Transcends rote strategies, and bridges a discontinuity in a search space;

Such a process will often result in a creative output, but it is possible (particularly
midway through a creative process) that the fruits of creative processing cannot (yet) be
expressed or articulated.
To some degree, AIs appear to meet these criteria; they are structured in a way that
enables them to transcend rote strategies and bridge discontinuities. Current generative
models organize representations as embeddings: high dimensional manifolds in which
similar contents are adjacent, with each dimension corresponds to a (continuous or dis-
crete) feature parameter [35]. The discovery of a suitable embedding space requires
decomposing the space of representations into suitably parameterizable functions. Prob-
lem solving often follows a gradient through this manifold by gradually changing the
parameters of a functional dimension as long as the result keeps improving.
We posit that creativity—whether human or AI—aims at restructuring the manifold,
by discovering new functional dimensions, or consolidating the space by reorganizing
its functions into a more adequate, useful or coherent structure, or simply observing
the outcome of modifications to the representations. In scientific and technological cre-
ativity this tends to involve elements of world models that are roughly common to all
(e.g., why objects fall due to gravity), while in the arts they are more likely to involve
personal experiences; nonetheless, both aim to restructure the manifold, and both result
in meaningful change.
Note, however, that in AI creativity, this change is meaningful to the user, not to the
AI, and process is instigated by the user, not the AI itself. Building on early ideas about
 A Path to Generative Artificial Selves 3

the importance of self-hood for AI [18], we suggest that for an AI to be creative in the
sense that it is meaningfully transformed through engagement in a creative task, it must
possess a self. Let us now take a closer look at what self-hood entails.

3 Selfhood
A first step toward an AI that is transformed through engagement in a creative task is
an autonomous agentic self. The terms ‘autonomous’ and ‘agency’ are used commonly
to refer to an AI that, given a meta-instruction, makes the necessary lower-level de-
cisions to carry it out [53]. For example, if prompted to design a profitable business,
an auto-GPT might decide what kind of business would be most profitable, design a
product, find suppliers, develop a marketing plan, and so forth. However, it was still
your decision to start a business. By autonomous agentic self, we mean an AI that is a
bounded, self-organizing, self-preserving agent that is distinct from, and interacts with,
its environment. It carries out actions because it wants to.
An autonomous agentic self senses and interacts with its world, and strives to pre-
serve its integrity as a structure separate from other structures. This is related to the
concepts of agency and embodiment (having a body that acts upon, and is acted upon
by, its world), and the symbol-grounding problem (mental representations must be con-
nected to the interaction contexts that constitute the system’s environment) [19].3 We
suggest, however, that to be meaningfully transformed through engagement in a cre-
ative task may require another level of self-hood: an internal model of one’s world and
one’s place in that world. This level is being actively discovered by the agent, and quite
distinct from the first. Indeed, these two levels of endogenous control may be at odds
with each other, as when a scientist stops eating to write out a new theory, or an artist
engrossed in painting ignores the children. The desire to care for one’s children stems
from the organic level of self-hood, i.e., one’s role as a participant in biological evo-
lution, while the desire to paint stems from one’s mental level of self-hood, i.e., one’s
role as a participant in cultural evolution. The first is concerned with somatic integrity
(i.e., body and substrate interactions), while the second is concerned with the integrity
of one’s internal model of the world, or worldview (i.e., the mind, as experienced from
the inside). This second level seeks viability, not at the level of the physical body, but
at the level of one’s thoughts, beliefs, and ideas—including one’s self-concept—and
how they are organized into a web of stories and understandings. A limitation of cur-
rent deep learning approaches appears to be the absence of self-reflection and coherent
understanding, aspects of human intelligence recruited in even simple creative problem-
solving tasks. We suggest that for a machine to possess these attributes and be mean-
ingfully transformed through engagement in a creative task, it should possess selfhood
both as a causally implemented entity that seeks to maintain its structural integrity, and
as mental model of itself inhabiting its world (i.e., a model of itself, or self-model, in
relation to a world model).
Human mental models not only emerge spontaneously, but they are self-organizing,
self-mending, and self-perpetuating [4, 40, 50]. The self-sustaining nature of our men-
3
The AI’s environment need not be the same one as our environment; it could, for example, be
an artificial environment that exists in a computer.
4 L. Gabora and J. Bach

tal models is evident in our tendency to resolve inconsistencies, accommodate new

information into existing schemas, and reduce cognitive dissonance. When we observe
something unexpected, it ‘catalyzes’ a stream of thought aimed at mending the gap in
our understanding. One’s worldview is continuously revised in response to, not just in-
formation from the outside world, but one’s ongoing stream of thought, through the
complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation.
To model such a structure, we need a network model that incorporates how new
information emerges through interactions between existing units of information until,
collectively, they form an integrated structure, the global structure of which guides its
behavior. This brings us to autocatalytic networks.

4 Reflexively Autocatalytic Foodset-derived Networks (RAFs)

Like ANNs and other complex networks used in cognitive science, an autocatalytic
network is composed of points (or nodes) connected by edges (or links). Autocatalytic
networks were originally proposed as an explanation to the origin of life problem [34,
33]4 , and subsequently developed into the theory of Reflexively Autocatalytic Foodset-
derived (RAF) network [30, 25, 26, 29, 28, 21, 22, 27, 23, 24, 44, 48, 47, 45, 46, 52]. The
term reflexively autocatalytic will be defined formally shortly, but informally it refers
to the fact that the whole can be reconstituted through interactions amongst the parts.
All nodes in a RAF that were either initially present, or that after entering the network
assume the same form within the network that they assumed outside it, are referred to
as the foodset. Nodes that came about through one or more interactions (i.e., that came
into being within the network itself) are referred to as foodset-derived.
RAFs are simply abstract mathematical structures, and it is equally correct to apply
them to cognition (and the origin of cultural evolution) as to biology (and the origin of
life). The origin of life application may have been developed first, but one is no more an
‘analogy’ than the other. Just as one molecule catalyzes the reaction by which another
is formed, one concept or idea may prime others related to it, or trigger representational
redescription (restructuring) or concept combination. Just as reactions can result in new
catalytic molecules and new reactions, concept combination and recursive representa-
tional redescription—streams of thought—can generate new concepts and ideas. Just
as reaction networks can generate and perpetuate living structures, streams of thought
generate and perpetuate our mental models. Terminology and correspondences between
different applications of the RAF framework are given in Table 1.
Formally, a RAF—is a non-empty subset R′ ⊆ R of reactions that satisfies the
following two properties:

1. It is reflexively autocatalytic: each reaction r ∈ R′ is catalyzed by at least one

element type that is either produced by R′ or is present in the foodset F .
2. It is F-generated: all reactants in R′ can be generated from the foodset F by using
a series of reactions only from R′ itself.
4
See also [38] on the related concept of autopoiesis.
 A Path to Generative Artificial Selves 5

RAF Theory Biology Cognition AI

Node Catalytic Molecule Mental representation Representations
Edge Reaction Association Link
Connected graph Catalytic closure Cognitive closure Representational Closure

Table 1. Terminology and correspondences between the application of RAFs in biology, cogni-
tion / culture, and ANNs / AI.

Thus, a RAF is a non-empty subset R′ ⊆ R of ‘reactions,’ a structure composed of

parts that interact to form new parts, wherein all parts, and all interaction they can un-
dergo, are either present from the start, or come into existence through the interactions
of other parts.
The largest RAF in a set of nodes is referred to as the maxRAF (Figure 1). It may
consist of subRAFs, which are often clustered and hierarchically structured. It may also
consist of Co-RAFs: structures that are not RAFs on their own but form RAFs, when
combined with other RAFs. RAFs can form spontaneously, and expand through the
merger of subRAFs and co-RAFs. Dynamic RAF systems can include transient RAFs,
which include nodes and/or reaction paths that are unstable.

Fig. 1. Example of transition from non-RAF (a to c), to RAF (d), to multiple RAFs (e), to their
integration into a domain-general maxRAF (f). Yellow ovals indicate RAFs; orange oval indicates
a co-RAF; purple oval indicates the maxRAF. The innate item on the lower left of all panels, and
the mental representation acquired through individual learning on the upper right of panels (e)
and (f) are items that have not been assimilated into a RAF. If we omit the distinction between
the three different sources for foodset nodes (innate, acquired through individual learning, or
acquired through social learning) the figure would serve equally well to illustrate, at an abstract
level, the origin of life from abiotic molecules, or the origin of an integrated cognitive model of
the world in the mind of a child starting from disconnected knowledge and memories.

The RAF framework provides a mathematical setting for modeling generative net-
work growth, identifying phase transitions in generative structures, and analyzing how
6 L. Gabora and J. Bach

network structure is affected by different parameters [45]. RAF theory can provide
bounds on the probability of emergence of maxRAFs and other structures [32, 39].
RAFs scale up, and RAF algorithms can analyze and detect phase transitions in vastly
complex networks that have proven intractable with other analytic approaches [43, 52].

5 RAF Models of Emergent Cognition

The complex biochemistry of all organisms including humans has a heritage that traces
back to primitive catalytic reaction systems; thus, humans possess RAF structure at both
the organismic level (physiological organization), and the mental level (mind, cognition,
and world modeling). Although the contents of a cognitive network change over time,
it maintains integrity as a relatively coherent whole. Cognitive structures reproduce, in
a piecemeal manner when individuals share ideas and perspectives. Human creativity
enables cognitive networks, and thereby culture, to evolve. Thus, whereas the origin
of life involves chemical reaction networks, the origin of cultural evolution involves
networks of knowledge and memories–i.e., cognitive networks, but the deep structure
of both can be captured in the RAF setting.
In a RAF model of an individual’s mental model of the world, mental represen-
tations of knowledge and experiences are represented by nodes and their associations
are represented by links. Associations between nodes may be due to similarity, co-
occurrence, causal relationship, or something else; for the moment we are not concerned
with how they are connected, just whether or not there is some basis for a connection.
We mentioned that (like other networks), autocatalytic networks exhibit percolation
thresholds and undergo rapid phase transitions from low to high connectivity [34]. This
property has been used to model the biological evolution of the kind of mind that is
capable of cumulative, open-ended cultural change. Cultural evolution required that
humans become capable of blending ideas from different domains, and adapting exist-
ing ideas and artifacts to new situations and preferences. For this, in turn, knowledge
from different domains had to be mutually accessible, and their minds had to acquire the
structure of a self-organizing network. It was therefore proposed that autocatalytic net-
works lay at the origin of not just biological evolution, but also cultural evolution, and
they have been used to model the evolution of the kind of cognitive structure capable of
cumulative culture [13, 15, 14].
In cognitive applications, the foodset consists of knowledge that is either innate
(e.g., archetypes, or a sense of right and wrong), acquired through individual learning
(e.g., learning to distinguish different trees while walking alone in a forest), or acquired
through social learning (e.g., learning from a neighbor how to change a tire). Foodset-
derived items are generated in the mind of the individual in question, through abstract
thought. (We ignore for now that the learning process itself—whether it be individual
learning, or social learning—may modify the mental representation, and thus the dis-
tinction between foodset and foodset-derived is probably a matter of degree.) In cog-
nitive applications, a reaction is an interaction between two mental representations (as
in concept combination), and the participating mental representations are in this sense
reactants. Cognitive catalysis occurs when a stimulus or mental representation activates
 A Path to Generative Artificial Selves 7

another mental representation that would otherwise have been unlikely to be activated
on its own (as when something you see or hear sparks a new idea).
Recent simulations suggest that a mundane form of creativity—namely active infer-
ence and abstraction—is not just essential but unavoidable in the formation of internal
models of the environment [49]. In the RAF framework, creativity is modeled as the
‘catalysis,’ or restructuring, of a new mental representation. RAF dynamics may re-
sult in a network that is self-organizing and self-sustaining [25, 39], as well as able
to self-replicate and evolve (in a relatively haphazard manner, without reliance on a
self-assembly code) [21]. Cognitive structures self-replicate, in a piecemeal manner
when individuals share ideas and perspectives. All living entities can be described in
terms of RAF structure. Since RAF networks describe structure that is self-organizing,
self-preserving, and self-regenerating, we posit that if an entity does not contain RAF
structure (or something akin to it), there is no self.
We mentioned that autocatalytic networks exhibit percolation thresholds and un-
dergo rapid phase transitions in connectivity, which was used to model the transition
in cognitive evolution from islands of domain-specific knowledge to a domain-general
connected network. In accordance with the dictum ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’
(developmental change often echoes evolutionary change), this feature of RAF net-
works has been used to model the developmental phase transition exhibited by children
to a state of greater integration amongst knowledge and memories [10]. In a young
child, knowledge and memories are not accessible without an external cue, and this is
described as islands of RAF structure. Once a small RAF structure is in place, new
knowledge can assimilate into and build upon this scaffold. As knowledge and mem-
ories accumulate, they cross a ‘percolation threshold,’ after which they are accessible
without an external cue. At this point, they can they be called upon as needed to solve
problems and interpret new situations. The individual is now able to prioritize, combine
concepts, even from different domains. This phase transition has been described as coa-
lescence of RAFs that represent discrete segments of domain-specific information into
a domain-general maxRAF [10].
The domain-general maxRAF describes an integrated understanding of the world.
There does not have to be consistency between different subRAFs (e.g., different so-
cial roles), merely accessibility, i.e., the ability to transition between them without an
external cue. Note also that there is no need to include all of one’s knowledge and ex-
periences (for example, dreams or repressed traumatic experiences etched into isolated
fragments of memory are not part of the domain-general maxRAF, thus accessible).
The concept of a domain-general maxRAF is implied in some discussions of AGI (see
[51]). However, the RAF theoretic approach lends itself to rigorous analysis using a
well-developed formal theory that encompasses different kinds of autonomous, self-
organizing structure—lifeforms and mental models—under the same formal unifying
framework [16].
The capacity to shift between a ‘fast’ mode of thought conducive to detecting re-
lationships of correlation, and a ‘slow’ mode of thought conducive to detecting rela-
tionships of causation (e.g., [31]) enables the child to tailor their thinking to the situa-
tion. The more representational structure is subsumed by the domain-general maxRAF,
the greater the potential for adaptive responses. Because elements of a domain-general
8 L. Gabora and J. Bach

maxRAF are mutually accessible, a disturbance at any one—such as, for example, loss
of a component, or loss of its ‘reactivity’ with other components—can trigger a wave
of mental activity aimed at recovering the domain-general maxRAF.

6 Discussion

We have introduced a speculative program for developing an AI that possesses a self,

i.e., that is composed of parts that collectively aim to preserve bounded structure, based
on the formal framework of a kind of autocatalytic networks known as RAFs. In an
attempt to make AI output more reliable and accountable, it may be desirable to in-
duce a predetermined context using special training techniques or filters, but they do
not possess a domain-general maxRAF. However, we believe that, under the right cir-
cumstances, one will spontaneously emerge in an AI. To achieve this, the AI’s mental
representations should be fully semantically accessible, such that there exists a poten-
tial path from one representation to all others. (This may appear excessive, but for any
concept there exists some context in which any given other concept is relevant, and this
is the source of creative connections.) This includes connections in time, so that the
agent can reconstruct the context of an observed feature by identifying its history and
past observations. Such a model implies unification of all domain models, in such a way
that it is possible to navigate between them as the context changes.
The representations must also be optimized for coherence, i.e., violations of con-
straints imposed by relevant observations, memories, and expectations must be min-
imized. In addition, the representations must be grounded, directly or indirectly, such
that they can be coupled to an environment that provides contextual constraints for every
relevant aspect of the representation. Note that humans (and many other animals) learn
with a focus on satisfying these conditions. For instance, when we look at a picture,
we do not consider it to be a structured texture without history that we correlate with
other images until its meaning reveals itself. Instead, we may consider that we are, for
instance, looking at a photograph of a stop sign, designed by a human being, taken by
another person with a camera in our shared past, and now being held up by another per-
son with the goal of conducting an experiment. Each step of learning aims at increasing
connectedness, coherence, and contextuality. Our learning springs from modeling our
observations (many of which entail regulating our needs or controlling our behavior).
In deep learning models, semantic coherence can be approximated through extensive
statistical analysis of very large amounts of suitably chosen symbolic training data, but
the process is not self-driven.
Although to date mathematical models of RAF cognitive networks have been de-
veloped, computational RAF cognitive networks have not yet been developed, but we
propose that self-driven autonomous processing would be possible in such a model. In
an artificial RAF network, nodes don’t just passively spread activation; they actively
restructure the network, resulting in new nodes and links, or the pruning of redun-
dant ones. Restructuring occurs in neural networks by changing the weights on links or
through addition or random pruning of nodes. In a model guided by the principles of
RAF theory, the global ‘shape’ of the network is collectively detected by elements of
this network, and guides the restructuring process. To achieve the machine equivalent of
 A Path to Generative Artificial Selves 9

creativity requires that tokens such as words or images be mutually accessible so as to

enable the encoding of reliable embeddings that encode associations and contexts. ‘Re-
action sequences’ amongst tokens are triggered by deterioration of some segment of the
artificial agent’s domain-general maxRAF, or an opportunity for network growth. This
change to the network may then potentially manifest externally as a creative output.

6.1 Related Research

Although space does not permit extensive coverage of the exciting work in this area, let
us look at a few current directions that may be particularly relevant.
It has been proposed that the Free Energy Principle [7] can be used to formally
model autonomy and adaptivity [36]. Like the Free Energy Principle, cognitive RAF
theory posits that we reduce disorder. However, unlike the Free Energy Principle, it can
account for novelty-seeking and creativity.
There have been numerous achievements in generative AI and and computational
creativity, some based on self-organizing networks, resulting in AI-generated art, mu-
sic, stories, poetry (for a recent review, see [5]. Baby AGI uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 and
Pinecone APIs, and the LangChain framework to create, organize, prioritize as well as
the executing of tasks [1]. AutoGPT uses GPT-4 to generate code and exploit GPT-3.5
as a virtual artificial memory space [53]. Reflexion reinforces language agents not by
updating weights, but through linguistic feedback. Reflexion agents verbally reflect on
task feedback signals, then maintain their own reflective text in an episodic memory
buffer to aid decision-making in subsequent trials. These achievements are promising
and impressive, but it is not straightforward how they could constitute a stepping stone
toward autonomous agentic self-hood; their actions flow from the commands of the
user rather than having as their origin the maintenance or growth of a self-preserving
network (be it biological, cognitive/cultural, or something else). Their creativity is not
driven by their own intrinsic desire to explore, understand, or come to terms with some-
thing, and its completion does not bring cathartic release. Evolutionary programming
and genetic algorithms can breed fitter outputs, but they don’t breed selves.
Computational models of dual processing modes have been implemented in cogni-
tive architectures (e.g., [20]), and have proven effective at increasing the fitness of out-
puts in a computational model of cultural evolution [12], and in the context of computer-
generated art [6]. By continuously shifting between processing modes in response to
ever-changing demands, the AI is able to transcend rote strategies and bridge disconti-
nuities in a search space (our second criterion for creativity). This capacity may prove
essential to achieving a domain-general maxRAF in an AI.

6.2 Future Work: Experimental Testing and Validation

This approach proposed here remains speculative and untested. We now discuss ideas
for testing and validation of the approach. First, the following would be indicative of a
domain-general maxRAF with a self-model:

1. The AI engages in self-initiated (as opposed to prompt-driven) restructuring of

mental contents in the service of preserving, restoring, or enhancing of an au-
10 L. Gabora and J. Bach

tonomous self that is distinct from (yet connected to) other entities, and possibly
subject to degradation.
2. The AI learns from observations continuously, ideally in real time.
3. The AI’s actions are visible to the AI, including its preferences (which may be static
or dynamically generated by a motivation model (e.g., [2, 3]), intentions (decisions
the AI makes according to its preferences and models), actions, and the outcomes
of these actions.
4. The interface between intention and action—which we can refer to as an ‘embodiment’—
is discovered in the context of a sense-decide-act loop.
5. The AI cares about improving its own actions, so the observation leads to new
internal models that the AI can act upon.
6. The AI can refer to these models in any present context, so that its self-model is
available for observation and cognition.
7. The AI’s self-model is dynamically discovered through self-driven reiterated re-
structuring. The AI tracks changes in the self-model and assign valence to them;
thus, it can predict and compare outcomes of changes to the self.

Finally, we suggest that self-hood might be difficult to detect through evaluation of

the artistic merit of its creative outputs, and claims of internal transformation or cathar-
tic release as a result of engagement in a creative practice would have to be met with
skepticism. However, if an AI is a unique, creative self, it should be able to develop
a personal style that, like that of humans [8, 11], is recognizable not just within the
creator’s primary domain but across different domains. In other words, if the AI is pri-
marily known for its fiction, then people who are familiar with that AI’s stories should
be able to guess above chance, not just which stories were created by that AI, but also
which pieces of art or music were created by that AI. This would indicate that the AI
had pieced together an understanding of the world that is not only specifically tied to its
unique knowledge base and ‘experiences’ (its foodset) but, through a meaning-making
process, it has forged the necessary stepping-stones (foodset-derived items) to weave
these elements together into a uniquely configured ‘worldview’.

7 Conclusions
We possess machines that generate undeniably creative products, but how would one
build an AI that experiences the transformative and therapeutic aspects of creativity
and can be considered a self? This paper provised a fresh albeit still speculative and
unproven approach to the question of machine agency, using a modeling framework
that has been used to analyze the emergence of two kinds of agency—the origin of
life, and the origin of a self-organizing mental model of the world—and the respective
evolutionary process these transitions enabled: biological and cultural evolution.
A mathematization of autocatalytic network theory known as RAF theory provides
a formal framework for (1) modeling how new elements emerge through interactions
amongst existing elements to yield a system that functions as an integrated whole, and
(2) analyzing how such systems adapt, replicate, and evolve. In applications of RAF
 A Path to Generative Artificial Selves 11

theory to the origin of life, the parts are catalytic molecules undergoing reactions. In
applications to cognition and the kind of mind capable of evolving culture, the parts are
mental representations of events, information, and ideas, which trigger representational
redescription culminating in new ideas. We suggest that this same formal framework
could be used to model the emergence of creative agency in a machine. If successful,
the resulting AIs would be creative according to not just external but also internal defi-
nitions of creativity; they would be autonomous beings, untethered from their creators,
for better or worse. Their creative outputs might properly be attributable them.
In virtue of a heritage that traces back to primitive catalytic reaction systems, hu-
mans are participants in biological evolution. Humans are also participants in cultural
evolution. Thus, we participate in two evolutionary processes—we are self-organizing
and self-sustaining at two (interacting) levels—and the origins of each has been ana-
lyzed with the RAF framework. It is an open question whether artificial creative agency
requires this kind of bi-level structure.
The suggestion that AI self-hood may be achievable within a RAF framework opens
up avenues for further research. One direction is to create an ANN with representations
that discover and refine their ‘catalytic’ potential to create new representations, followed
by onset of the capacity to shift between dual processing modes, and thereby bridge dis-
parate clusters. The resulting networks and dynamics are then analyzed using existing
RAF theory methods, discussed above. The emergence of a domain-general maxRAF,
and spontaneous yet lasting network change during creative tasks would be indications
that the project was successful. It could be fruitful to carry this out incorporating ideas
from the Free Energy Principle approach, discussed above. Other possibilities are to
develop artificial societies of interacting RAF-based agents, and explore how the con-
cept of resonance [37] could be incorporated. It could be productive to investigate how
such an AI would respond to teaching by and collaboration with a human tutor in a
developmental paradigm.
Since current generative AIs are trained on human output, and human cognitive net-
works meet the criteria for a RAF, they inherit characteristics of RAF structure from
us. This is sufficient to enable an AI model to prioritize, combine concepts, ‘restruc-
ture’ knowledge and thereby adapt it to new situations, or make something in the style
of something else. We suggest that current AIs are merely extensions of us, much like
tools, calculators, or artificial limbs; they are not selves. They generate creative prod-
ucts, but their creativity is an expression of us.
We end with two observations and two speculative propositions: (1) RAFs were
developed to for modeling the origin of life and the onset of biological evolution [30,
39, 44, 48, 47, 46, 52], and (2) The mind serves as the hub of a second evolutionary
process (cultural evolution), which also can be modeled in terms of RAF structure [13,
15, 14, 16, 17], and thus might be considered a second level of ‘aliveness.’ Based on our
considerations, we propose (1) that it is only once machines exhibit RAF structure at
the level of self-modeling that they will possess creative agency and self-hood.5 It may
appear to be appropriate to attribute AIs authorship of works created by them. A second
proposition is that the route forward to AI agency will involve a fusion of methodologies
5
If there is an agent external to the machine that will repair it when it breaks, it may not have to
exhibit RAF structure at all levels.
12 L. Gabora and J. Bach

and insights from origin of life research and artificial intelligence. We look forward to
seeing if these predictions are holding up in this exciting era of AI research.

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