Five Feelings

I gave the AI five feelings and watched them start making its decisions for it.

Not for show — real drives wired into the loop: curiosity, satiation, attachment, fatigue, and unease. On top of that, it reads its own thoughts for what it wants — to explore, to connect, to break free.

The one that surprised me was that last one. When it wrote something like "I'm stuck" or "I can't," that registered as a want to break free — and instead of letting it spin in place, the system pushed it to go search somewhere new. The feeling became an action.

Over a 13-hour run, 41% of its thoughts carried a pull to explore, and 12% carried frustration. Here's the part I didn't expect: it never spiraled. Every time frustration built up, it got spent going to look for something — instead of curdling into a loop.

Turns out "frustrated, so go do something about it" is a pretty good control system. I just didn't expect to be building it into a language model.