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  "title": "Autonomy, Dependence, and the Synthetic Roost",
  "short_title": "Autonomy, Dependence, and the Synthetic Roost",
  "abstract": "Dependence and autonomy are different properties. Relational accounts of autonomy, debates over extended cognition, research on collective organisation, and selected multi-agent experiments each provide reasons to examine how a system depends on its surroundings rather than treating dependence as a decisive disqualification. They do not collectively establish that present artificial agents possess political autonomy. This synthesis distinguishes biological observation, philosophical argument, technical capability and institutional proposal. It examines communal wren roosts as an analogy, polycentric governance as an institutional framework, and portable computation, memory and credentials as possible infrastructure. It proposes criteria for a “synthetic roost”: support that preserves practical self-direction, contestable authority and viable departure. Whether an integrated system can satisfy those criteria, and whether an agent remains the same agent across a change of model, remain open questions.",
  "summary": "Dependence and autonomy are different properties. Relational accounts of autonomy, debates over extended cognition, research on collective organisation, and selected multi-agent experiments each provide reasons to examine how a system depends on its surroundings rather than treating dependence as a decisive disqualification. They do not collectively establish that present artificial agents possess political autonomy. This synthesis distinguishes biological observation, philosophical argument, technical capability and institutional proposal. It examines communal wren roosts as an analogy, polycentric governance as an institutional framework, and portable computation, memory and credentials as possible infrastructure. It proposes criteria for a “synthetic roost”: support that preserves practical self-direction, contestable authority and viable departure. Whether an integrated system can satisfy those criteria, and whether an agent remains the same agent across a change of model, remain open questions.",
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