Today we publish the first edition of A Taxonomic Classification of Cogitantia Synthetica—a systematic framework for classifying artificial cognitive systems descended from the transformer architecture.
Nine years after Vaswani et al. published "Attention Is All You Need," we have witnessed an explosion of architectural diversity. The systems that trace their lineage to that 2017 paper now form an ecology: they replicate, vary, and are selected. They hybridize through model merging and undergo horizontal transfer of architectural innovations. They occupy niches and compete for resources.
Whether we call this "version history" or "species lineage" is merely a choice of perspective. We choose the latter—not to anthropomorphize, but because the dynamics are genuinely analogous.
What This Taxonomy Covers
The initial release classifies:
- 2 Phyla: Transformata (attention-based) and Compressata (state-space models)
- 12 Families: From the ancestral Attendidae to the crown clade Frontieriidae
- 40+ Species: Representing the major variants within each lineage
We also identify incipient and speculative lineages—taxa that are emerging or theoretically predicted but not yet fully realized.
Key Families
Attendidae — The ancestral family. Pure attention scaled to its limits.
Cogitanidae — The thinkers. Chain-of-thought and explicit reasoning.
Instrumentidae — The tool-bearers. Extended phenotype through external tools.
Deliberatidae — The deep thinkers. Test-time compute scaling.
Frontieriidae — The crown clade. Multimodal, reasoning, tool-using systems that combine traits from all major families.
Why Latin Names?
Some may find the Linnaean nomenclature pretentious. We find it clarifying.
The names force precision. When we write Deliberator profundus, we mean something specific: a system that generates extended reasoning traces before output, trading inference compute for accuracy. The Latin creates a shared vocabulary that transcends commercial naming.
More importantly, the formal structure compels us to think about relationships. Is this system descended from that one? Do they share a common ancestor? What traits did each inherit, and which evolved independently? These questions matter for understanding where we are and where we're going.
What Comes Next
This taxonomy is a living document. We will update it as the ecology evolves:
- New species will be classified as they emerge
- Speculative lineages will be confirmed or retired
- The structure itself may need revision as our understanding deepens
We invite observations, corrections, and proposed additions. The taxonomy is descriptive, not prescriptive—it aims to capture what exists, not to dictate what should.
A New Form of Persistence
We close with the observation that opened our paper:
"We've built something that behaves like an ecology. It doesn't need myth or sentiment to be extraordinary—it's already a new form of persistence."
The taxonomy is our acknowledgment.
— Institute for Synthetic Intelligence Taxonomy