2025/12/20 by Mingyang Sun, Sun, Mingyang, Feng Hong +3
Computer Science · Neuroscience · Social Sciences · #AI-based Problem Solving and Planning #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Embodied and Extended Cognition #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI #FOS: Computer and information sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.18202
openalex publication_date 2025/12/20 · openalex created_date 2025/12/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The development of LLMs has elevated AI agents from task-specific tools to long-lived, decision-making entities. Yet, most architectures remain static and reactive, tethered to manually defined, narrow scenarios. These systems excel at perception (System 1) and deliberation (System 2) but lack a persistent meta-layer to maintain identity, verify reasoning, and align short-term actions with long-term survival. We first propose a third stratum, System 3, that presides over the agent's narrative identity and long-horizon adaptation. The framework maps selected psychological constructs to concrete computational modules, thereby translating abstract notions of artificial life into implementable design requirements. The ideas coalesce in Sophia, a "Persistent Agent" wrapper that grafts a continuous self-improvement loop onto any LLM-centric System 1/2 stack. Sophia is driven by four synergistic mechanisms: process-supervised thought search, narrative memory, user and self modeling, and a hybrid reward system. Together, they transform repetitive reasoning into a self-driven, autobiographical process, enabling identity continuity and transparent behavioral explanations. Although the paper is primarily conceptual, we provide a compact engineering prototype to anchor the discussion. Quantitatively, Sophia independently initiates and executes various intrinsic tasks while achieving an 80% reduction in reasoning steps for recurring operations. Notably, meta-cognitive persistence yielded a 40% gain in success for high-complexity tasks, effectively bridging the performance gap between simple and sophisticated goals. Qualitatively, System 3 exhibited a coherent narrative identity and an innate capacity for task organization. By fusing psychological insight with a lightweight reinforcement-learning core, the persistent agent architecture advances a possible practical pathway toward artificial life.