May 21, 2025
I’ve been thinking about this for weeks and I think I finally figured out the missing piece.
Remember when I talked about the trigger-action loop? Trigger → Cognitive Activation → Appraisal → Action → Outcome?
I said there was no reward. That the habit loop has Cue → Routine → Reward, but our loop didn’t have that third piece.
Well, I was wrong. The reward is there. It’s just not where I thought it was.
The reward is the goal.
Goals Give Purpose to Everything
Every interaction you have is driven by an underlying goal. Not like “I want to make a million dollars” goal. More like “I want this person to trust me” or “I want to reduce my uncertainty about this situation” or “I want to maintain my professional standing.”
These goals are what give the entire loop its purpose.
Example
You’re in a meeting with your boss. Your brain isn’t just processing information. It’s running toward a goal:
- “I want them to see me as competent”
- “I want to avoid looking stupid”
- “I want to get approval for my project”
Every word you say, every decision you make, is in service of that goal. And when you achieve it? That’s the reward. That feeling of “okay, that went well.”
But here’s what’s wild—you don’t consciously think about these goals most of the time. They’re just running in the background. Guiding everything you do.
The AI Problem
And AI agents? They don’t have goals. They have tasks. They have instructions. But they don’t have that underlying motivation that shapes every decision.
This is why AI feels robotic. Because it’s not goal-seeking. It’s instruction-following.
What I’m Building
An AI that has goals. Not just “complete this task” but “maintain this relationship” and “reduce uncertainty about this situation” and “build trust with this person.”
Goals that persist across interactions. Goals that shape behavior. Goals that create the “reward” signal when they’re achieved.
Because at the end of the day, every interaction is a goal-seeking mechanism.
And if your AI doesn’t have goals, it’s not actually thinking. It’s just executing.
What goals does your AI have? Or does it even have any?