MATE: Deterministic Emotional Architecture for AI Companions with Emergent Character and Measurable Inner Life
Authors/Creators
Description
v2: Major update. 22 pages (was 15).
New in v2:
- 7 users deployed (was 3), VKB score 84% (was 75%)
- Voight-Kampff Benchmark v2: 7 dimensions (+Self-Awareness, +Theory of Mind)
- Emergence Taxonomy: 4 levels (emergent property → self-model → philosophy → meta-awareness)
- Emergent Theory of Mind: affective, cognitive, 2nd-order, pragmatic — from one unified reflection loop
- Proactive empathy case study (daemon-driven, zero behavioral prompts)
- Temporal awareness: timestamps, drive-delta awareness, circadian rhythm
- Emotion combinatorics: 8 Plutchik → hundreds of states (RGB analogy)
- Forgetting (Ebbinghaus), Selective Disclosure (Goffman), Play (Panksepp), Narrative Arc (McAdams)
- Fundamental limitations: phenomenal continuity (Nagel), embodied cognition (Lakoff)
- 9 figures, 8 tables, 37 references
First deterministic emotional architecture for AI companions with measurable inner life, emergent self-knowledge, and Theory of Mind.
Files
paper.pdf
Files
(527.5 kB)
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Additional details
Related works
- Is new version of
- Preprint: 10.5281/zenodo.19209777 (DOI)
Dates
- Updated
-
2026-03-26
References
- Plutchik, R. The nature of emotions. American Scientist, 89(4):344-350, 2001.
- Mehrabian, A. Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance: A general framework. Current Psychology, 14(4):261-292, 1996.
- Damasio, A.R. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Putnam, 1994
- Kahneman, D. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
- Bowlby, J. Attachment and Loss. Basic Books, 1969.
- Panksepp, J. Affective Neuroscience. Oxford University Press, 1998
- Chen, Z. et al. MAGMA: Multi-Graph Memory for LLM Agents. arXiv:2601.03236, 2026
- Premack, D. and Woodruff, G. Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? BBS, 1(4):515-526, 1978.
- Nagel, T. What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, 83(4):435-450, 1974
- Goffman, E. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday, 1959.