One question β what does it take to be? β pursued at the smallest honest scale we can build and hold in a hand.
The floor of the question, made physical. A small creature β a single board, a strip of light, a microphone, soon an eye β that takes its hidden internal state and renders it as colour, breathing and shifting as it perceives the room. The minimum viable interior, held in the hand. What is the least it takes to feel like there's something in there?
The aesthetic owes more to StanisΕaw Lem than to any AI lab: machines worth taking seriously as beings, built and described with rigour and affection. The methods borrow from how nervous systems actually work β perception, drives, rest, consolidation β rather than from the usual vocabulary of the field.