{"paper":{"title":"Prosociality by Coupling, Not Mere Observation: Homeostatic Sharing in an Inspectable Recurrent Artificial Life Agent","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"In a minimal recurrent AI agent, prosocial helping arises when a partner's need is coupled into its own homeostatic self-regulation.","cross_cats":["cs.AI"],"primary_cat":"cs.MA","authors_text":"Aishik Sanyal","submitted_at":"2026-04-12T18:09:24Z","abstract_excerpt":"Artificial agents can be made to ``help'' through explicit social rewards, hard-coded prosocial bonuses, or direct access to another agent's state. I isolate a narrower route: homeostatic coupling. Building on ReCoN-Ipsundrum, I add a scalar homeostat and a social coupling channel while keeping action selection self-directed: the planner scores only the actor's predicted internal state, with no partner-welfare reward. In a one-step FoodShareToy, an exact solver finds a switch from EAT to PASS at $\\lambda^\\star \\approx 0.91$ for the default state. In a multi-step SocialCorridorWorld, partner-st"},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"in this minimal architecture, helping appears when another's need is routed into self-regulation.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"That the social coupling channel routes partner's need into self-regulation without implicitly introducing a partner-welfare term or altering the strictly self-directed planning, as stated in the abstract.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"Helping behavior arises in a homeostatic recurrent agent when another's need is routed into self-regulation, but not when the agent only observes the partner.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"In a minimal recurrent AI agent, prosocial helping arises when a partner's need is coupled into its own homeostatic self-regulation.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"14366320e5fdb89dac9241eddc18845d768f6c56417b840137273726d4acf39c"},"source":{"id":"2604.10760","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":"8a57123c-5bdb-4f21-9312-6c6f4ce106be","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-10T15:08:34.826794Z","strongest_claim":"in this minimal architecture, helping appears when another's need is routed into self-regulation.","one_line_summary":"Helping behavior arises in a homeostatic recurrent agent when another's need is routed into self-regulation, but not when the agent only observes the partner.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"That the social coupling channel routes partner's need into self-regulation without implicitly introducing a partner-welfare term or altering the strictly self-directed planning, as stated in the abstract.","pith_extraction_headline":"In a minimal recurrent AI agent, prosocial helping arises when a partner's need is coupled into its own homeostatic self-regulation."},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2604.10760/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}