That's a very interesting (although indirect) pathway for the emergence of causal awareness, which may increase over time - and something that was so far impossible because networks didn't perceive their own outputs, much less their effects. Even in conversation, the weights remain static.

Now I'm wondering if in the next generation, the "self" concept will have sufficient explanatory power to become part of the network's world model. How close do the iterations have to be, how similar the models for it to arise?