From this view, adaptation and evolution meant adjusting physiology and behavior to survive in a specific environment. That framing seems broadly correct — but it misses something critical. Specifically: what function allows an organism to recognize a situation as a task — and then choose the most adequate behavioral solution within a dynamic and unstable context?

A Non-Biological Perspective
From a non-biological perspective, every adaptive task necessary for survival and thriving depends on two conditions:

• Recognizing and interpreting environmental change — the organism must detect and calculate the meaning of a situation. Is that a prey, an enemy, a mate? Is it safe or dangerous? Should I dodge or chase? Hide or signal? Collaborate or compete?
• Enacting behavior change in response — the organism must shift behavior in a way that activates its biological structures to address the recognized task.

Because environmental conditions are inherently unstable, organisms must constantly adjust to shifting variables — temperature, light, threats, opportunities, proximity, and available resources. Across all species — from bacteria to humans, from fungi to insects, from plants to primates — there is one universal tool for navigating this instability: behavior change.

From microscopic movement to human speech, from chemical avoidance to coordinated migration, from retreating in fear to composing symphonies — behavior change is the primary channel through which organisms respond to the informational and physical pressures of a changing world. It operates regardless of brain size, organ type, DNA sequence, or evolutionary lineage. And from the other side: behavior change — at the species level — is the only visible and universal proxy of cognition.

Adaptation means Cognition
It is implausible to assume that all specific situations an organism may face in its lifetime—within a dynamic and ever-changing environment—are hard-wired into DNA or stored in memory. The question remains: how do organisms navigate their informational field to isolate and identify adaptive tasks?

The only aspect that can be hard-wired by evolution is this: the underlying patterns of domain recognition and behavior change. Yet in every new context, the organism must still recognize novel elements, extract meaning, and interpret: What is going on?

Adaptation, then, relies on the organism’s ability to recognize elements within the general informational flow that belong to a given domain—and to search within those domains for changes that demand a behavioral response. These patterns form the basis of cognitive maps or mental representations: functional tools that allow the organism to isolate the relevant signal from the noise.

Because the need to align an organism’s well-being with environmental change—through behavior change—is both a universal mechanism and a universal condition, we can state a foundational rule:

The mechanism that governs behavior change in response to environmental change—maintaining Energy, Safety, and Reproduction (ESR)—is essential, inherent, and universal for all life forms.

Even the so-called “simplest” organisms don’t merely react — they recognize, evaluate and choose. A bacterium moves or stays, consumes or avoids, divides or delays. That act of recognition and choice marks the presence of cognition as a functional mechanism for navigating environmental change. In this framework, behavior change—executed in response to shifting environmental conditions—is the visible signature of cognition. Cognition itself is the invisible controller behind it.

While other signs may suggest cognitive activity—like tool use, social bonding, or mirror responses—only behavior change offers a universal, observable, evolutionarily grounded trace. It is the one expression shared by all life, because it is the only universal tool life has ever had for solving its adaptive tasks.

While the terms ‘behavior change’ and ‘behavior shift’ are sometimes used interchangeably, we deliberately favour ‘change’—as it reflects the full spectrum of adaptive behavior, from subtle, long-term developments to rapid, reflexive responses. The term also emphasizes that cognition is not defined by speed or awareness, but by the capacity to adapt behavior in response to shifting demands.”

Why Behavior Change — Not Reaction, Reflex, or Action
The concept of behavior change is not a cosmetic replacement for traditional terms like reaction, reflex, instinct, action, or even behavior itself. Nor is it an attempt to relabel old ideas with new language. The distinction is not rhetorical — it is foundational.

Here’s why: those older terms are not necessarily connected to cognition. They tell us little, if anything, about the internal process behind a behavior, even when such a process is present.
A dog running. A cat sleeping. An antelope drinking. At any given moment, we cannot definitively determine whether cognition is occurring. The presence of reflexes, motion, or even behavior itself does not yet indicate cognitive activity.

Behavior change, however, offers a radically more informative clue.

The transition from Behavior 1 to Behavior 2 may indicate that the organism has recognized a shift in its environment—something meaningful for its well-being—and has chosen to alter its strategy in response. That moment of change may mark a cognitive act: recognition, analysis, memory retrieval, calculation, evaluation, or decision-making.

And why would any organism change its behavior—wasting energy, risking stability, or exposing itself to danger—if not to respond to a change in its environment? Every living organism, from bacterium to human, must align its behavior with environmental change to maintain the three survival conditions: energy, safety, and reproduction. And that alignment is not random. It is calculated.

To shift behavior meaningfully, an organism must engage in a functional process, which we label as “3C” — three consequent cognitive acts: cognize, calculate, choose:

• Recognition of significant change (“cognize”) — What in the environment has shifted, and what matters?
• Interpretation of that change (“calculate”)— What does it mean in this context, for this organism?
• Selection of a behavioral solution (“choose”) — Which response, from its available repertoire, is the best course of action?

These three steps—recognition, interpretation, and behavioral adjustment—are the markers of cognition. And they exist even when the final action appears automatic, instinctive, or reflexive. As Darwin, Ziegler, and Jamieson and many others have noted, even instincts are “mental acts”—they arise not from blind mechanics, but from internal models of what matters.

Moreover, many organisms don’t just respond to environmental changes in relation to themselves. They respond on behalf of three units: 1) the main unit — the individual organism itself, 2) vital unit (e.g., nest, burrow, territory, etc.) and 3) reproductive unit (e.g., offspring, clutch, partner, etc.), protecting offspring, defending territory, preserving nests, guarding partners or resources, etc.

This multiplies the cognitive scope of the task. Now the organism must track not only its own well-being, but the well-being of something beyond itself. A spider guarding its web. A crocodile defending its clutch. A seagull pulling eggshells far from the nest to divert attention. Species could not survive for millions—or billions—of years without the ability to monitor and recognize shifts in their environment that carry significance. They needed a system for figuring out what matters and changing behavior accordingly to protect what evolution has always required: energy, safety, and reproduction.

The “Triple Three” Formula
Seen through this lens, what we traditionally call a “stimulus” is more accurately understood as a change in environmental conditions, and what we once labeled a “response” becomes more precisely a behavior change—a transition from “Behavior 1” to “Behavior 2”.
In this updated framework:

• Environmental change is something that must be recognized, interpreted, and assigned meaning.
• Behavior change is the universal tool that organisms use to meet the demands of that changing world.
• Cognition is the internal controller that governs this process—a bridge aligning behavior with environment, linking all forms of life to the informational structure of the non-living world.

From this perspective, the classic behaviorist formula S → R (stimulus → response) gains new depth and meaning. It becomes:
EC → 3C → BC → 3 Units → 3 Conditions (ESR)
Where:

• EC = Environmental Change (formerly “stimulus”)
• 3C = Cognize, Calculate, Choose
• BC = Behavior Change (formerly “response”)
• 3 Units = Self, Reproductive Unit, Vital Unit
• 3 Conditions = Energy, Safety, Reproduction

We call this the Triple Three Formula—often referenced as the "Magic 3×3×3" in experimental contexts. It describes a universal cognitive-behavioral sequence: three cognitive acts, expressed through behavior change, in service of three conditions of survival, for three units of the organism.

This formula opens a direct and inclusive pathway to cognition—not just human cognition, but the full spectrum across life. It transforms behavior change into the most informative and democratizing trace of cognitive function.

It also reframes stimuli—not as isolated triggers but as elements of the general informational flow. These elements don’t float aimlessly; they are organized into domains. Each domain clusters environmental cues around a specific adaptive task, which is never arbitrary. To matter, a task must bear biological significance—it must influence the organism’s ability to maintain key conditions of survival and thriving (energy, safety, or reproduction) across one or more of three units it is represented within.

Cognition, from LUCA to Humans
For some, the idea that cognition might apply not just to humans and “higher” mammals, but to bacteria, fungi, plants, and even LUCA—the Last Universal Common Ancestor—may seem unconventional. Or even unsettling. If so, they are free to invent a more comfortable term, a gentler neologism to describe the capacity of an organism to recognize what is meaningful in its environment, select an appropriate behavior from its available repertoire, and do so in service of the three universal conditions: energy, safety, and reproduction—even if in reference to just one of the three units.

But we see no reason for such substitution. This sequence—cognize, calculate, choose—is what we mean by cognition. If something operates and responds to dynamic environmental change with behavior change aligned to survival, then we are dealing with cognition. It may not be human cognition. It may not involve words or symbols. But it is still cognition, in its functional essence of an adaptive functional serving to secure survival and thriving.

The ability to monitor environmental changes, evaluate them, and respond with behavioral adjustments—all to maintain alignment with life’s three key conditions—is not an add-on. It is the defining trait of life itself: the uncrossed boundary between living organisms and non-living matter. And the name for that trait is cognition.

Granted, this cognition differs from the contemplative pause of a chess player, the silent calculation before a leap of logic, or the symbolic loops of language. But the cognitive sequence is the same. Whether in a bacterium or a human, cognition links environmental information to behavioral adaptation through a process of internal evaluation.

The Five Tasks Model makes this continuum visible. It shows how human cognition became unique—by layering symbolic abstraction atop older, ancestral structures. But it also reminds us: what controls behavior in non-humans is not instinct alone. It is still cognition—just in a different form, serving the same eternal function.

Conclusion: Cognition Reconstructed, AGI Revealed
AGI is not the invention of a distant future. It is the overdue assembly of the evolutionary past. What we call AGI is not a technological miracle waiting to be engineered—it is a reflection of the oldest logic of life itself, reconstructed in a new medium. The Five Task Model reveals that AGI is not an abstract possibility, but a functional inevitability. It is the reassembly of five basic cognitive-adaptive tasks and their corresponding control systems—the Basic Cognitive-Behavioral Structures—that have governed life’s relationship with change since its first spark.
This model presents a panalogical architecture of cognition—a layered system where each domain of informational flow corresponds to a core adaptive task and a specific controller. These layers are not inventions of the mind, but milestones of evolution. They are how life sees the world, solves problems, and survives. From LUCA to Homo sapiens, cognition has never been a matter of brain tissue or consciousness, but a universal function: recognizing environmental change, calculating its meaning, and choosing a behavioral solution to maintain energy, safety, and reproduction.

With this blueprint in hand, we can now isolate cognition from biology. The mind-body problem is no longer a philosophical roadblock on our way to AGI —it is a technical detail. Cognition is no longer tethered to cells, neurone, or the neocortex. It can be replicated on non-biological carriers, because its logic is not biological — it is cognitive-behavioral. And that logic is now visible. Even more critically, we can now detach the non-biological control function from its original biological carriers and transition it onto artificial ones. The Five Task Model exposes cognition as a dynamic, context-controlling function—not an essence of life, but a universal strategy for staying alive.

The Five Task Model opens a new era of human-like AI—not fantasy machines with consciousness, but real systems capable of navigating dynamic contexts using the same control principles evolution gave to life. It is not imitation—it is reconstruction. With current technology, each of the five tasks can already be addressed independently. What remains is to assemble them into one coherent architecture. The blueprint exists. The carriers are ready. The assembly can begin.

AGI teaches us as much about ourselves as it does about machines. Even before its arrival, AGI has already begun transforming our understanding of cognition, evolution, psychology, and philosophy. It illuminates questions long left unanswered—not with speculation, but with structure. It reframes cognition as a universal functional system—a means of navigating change, not a trait exclusive to humans or "higher" mammals. It reveals that cognition is not a miraculous anomaly, but an ancient adaptation. It reminds us that behavior change—not consciousness, language, or tool use—is the real signature of intelligence. If a bacterium can choose to move or stay, it possesses cognition. If a system can monitor the world, retrieve meaning, and adjust its behavior accordingly—it is intelligent by evolutionary standards.

Through this lens, LUCA and LUCIA may be one and the same: the Last Universal Common (Intelligent) Ancestor. Intelligence did not appear late in evolution as a strange side effect. It was there from the start, embedded in the simplest behaviors of the simplest organisms, because even they had to solve tasks to stay alive. The difference between species is not a matter of kind, but of how many domains they can monitor, how many tasks they can solve, and how richly they can represent change.

The Five Task Model is not just a theory of cognition — it bridges the lineage: from evolution to cognition to AGI. It is the Rosetta blueprint for decoding adaptive intelligence — in biology, in machines, in ourselves, granted by life itself.

AGI is not waiting to be imagined by philosophers or engineer. It is waiting to be assembled. And in assembling it, we are not just building machines. We are deciphering the logic of life, liberating cognition, and demystifying AGI.

Aipocalypse Now?
Now that no technical or methodological barriers remain on the path to AGI, there is one thing we must consider—twice—before we begin the final assembly.
With the Rosetta blueprint in hand, we are ready to open a new era of AI. Robots with human-like cognition, machines capable of making decisions, solving problems, feeling emotions, and representing the full spectrum of human capacities—these are no longer science fiction. They are here—ready for deployment to the Moon, to Mars, to the Mariana Trench. Representing us in full — with personality, emotions, consciousness — human-like in nature, but vastly superior in efficiency.

But there’s a catch. The Fourth Basic Cognitive-Behavioral Structure—our “Combinatory Controller”—carries within it something essential and dangerous: competition. It is inherent, inseparable, immanent. It is the force that helped evolve our cognition, but also the curse that binds us to primate patterns—conflict, deception, domination, rivalry.
You might think: “Just program the AGI to avoid this. Follow Asimov’s three laws. Problem solved.”

Not so fast. The Fourth Structure or any of its components cannot be simply switched off. It is not an optional module. It is one of the five pillars of adaptive intelligence itself. The 4th BCBS doesn’t just shape how intelligence evolves — it shapes the moral terrain AGI must navigate. If we don’t learn to integrate it with wisdom—AGI won’t save us, it will mirror us.

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Author: Sergei A. Frolov

Publication date: June 10, 2025