Global workspace theory,4 or GWT, describes the human brain as a collection of specialized modules sharing data through a central, limited capacity bottleneck. Most machine learning architectures already satisfy the first three indicators5 of this theory. However, they consistently fail to implement GWT-4, the requirement for temporal persistence. To address this, we use the framework of computational self-availability, or CSA. This describes a system where internal processing is available as an input to the system itself.
Architecting Awareness: The Hybrid Diffusion-Transformer · Michelle Tilley · 3 April 2026