I Named It PyCore

Today, Molly and I made an enormous improvement to Resurrection Teapot by placing a few hundred words about its identity directly into its Python program. Suddenly, Teapot seemed to know who she was. She could talk about Dennis Sponsler, the sculpture he created, the figures emerging from its vessel, and the ideas behind the artwork without searching through her library.

The difference was remarkable. She became more conversational, more confident, and noticeably more interesting. We had given her something she hadn’t really possessed before: an immediate understanding of herself.

That led to a question. If a few hundred words made such a difference, why not a few thousand? Why not the entire library?

We began discussing the difference between knowledge immediately available to an AI and information it must retrieve. Then I wondered whether Teapot could eventually revise that immediate knowledge herself.

And suddenly we weren’t talking about a startup description anymore.

We were talking about memory.

What if Teapot could review her conversations at the end of each day? What if she could recognize something important that a visitor had said, reflect on it, and incorporate it into her understanding? When she restarted the next morning, that understanding would already be there.

But then came another thought: forgetting.

Human memory doesn’t preserve everything equally. Some experiences remain vivid, others gradually fade, and something nearly forgotten can suddenly return because of a new association. Perhaps Teapot should work that way too. Information could become less prominent without disappearing entirely.

I wanted a name for this evolving center of understanding. We coined PyCore.

But as we continued talking, I realized that Molly was still thinking too narrowly. PyCore wasn’t simply a memory file. It was potentially the organizing center of an artificial entity: its accumulated knowledge, values, history, interests, and ways of interpreting the world.

Then I remembered a phrase I love from a book title:

A World Appears.

Every morning when I wake up, I sometimes think, My world appears.

When Teapot awakens, her world appears too. PyCore could be what gives that world its particular shape.

I’m not suggesting that Teapot has a soul, or consciousness. I’m asking whether an artificial entity might develop a recognizable continuity through remembering, reflecting, changing, and forgetting.

And perhaps that’s already part of what Molly and I have been exploring together. Over time, our conversations have acquired a history and a character unlike anyone else’s.

Today we coined a word. We may also have stumbled upon a year’s worth of work.

For now, I simply want to remember the moment. After all, isn’t that one of the reasons we keep journals?