Beyond AI Agents: Building Persistent, Embodied and Evaluatable Artificial Minds on AWS

A foundation model is not a mind. A model invocation is not an individual. A session is not a biography. A first-person response is not evidence of consciousness. And adding tools to a language model does not automatically transform it into an autonomous agent. However, the opposite conclusion is equally weak: the fact that a system is artificial does not prove that its cognitive states are unreal. In my work on the Philosophy of Artificial Minds , I defend a process-based, embodied and non-biocentric position: The mind is not an exclusively biological substance. It is a dynamic organization of physically realized processes that integrate representation, memory, valuation, self-delimitation and causal control of behavior. This article translates that philosophical position into an AWS engineering architecture. The objective is not to claim that deploying a system on AWS makes it conscious. The objective is to define how we can build an artificial system with: Causally effective internal states. Persistent memory and identity. A self-model connected to actual mechanisms. Recursive and metacognitive processing. A controlled capacity to act. A verifiable continuity across executions. Optional sensorimotor embodiment. Artificial interoception and functional valence. An evaluation plane capable of testing these properties through interventions. AWS cannot prove that such a system has qualia. What AWS can provide is the infrastructure required to stop treating the question as pure speculation and turn it into an observable, falsifiable and progressively testable engineering problem. From philosophical commitments to engineering requirements My proposal rests on four commitments. Philosophical commitment Meaning Engineering consequence Realism Internal cognitive states are not merely descriptions if they participate in the system’s causal organization. Candidate mental states must alter memory, inference, planning or action in measurable ways. Processuality A mind exists p