Materially embodied linguistic agency and human responses

Determine how irreversible material damage changes the causal organization of embodiment, linguistic participation, and precariousness in an artificial agent, and how people interpret and act toward an agent whose linguistic refusals and requests regulate its continued viability.

Background

The study implements a nonresetting terminal boundary functionally in simulation, but it does not expose the agent's sensors, actuators, policy substrate, or reachable-state structure to open-ended physical degradation. Its evidence therefore concerns engineered functional coupling within a simulated lineage rather than a physically vulnerable individual.

The paper also contains no formal human-participant experiment. It explicitly leaves unresolved both the effect of irreversible material damage on the organization of synthetic linguistic agency and human behavior toward an agent whose linguistic conduct has consequences for its own continued existence. These questions motivate subsequent physical embodiment and human-participant studies.