Emergence 4.0: A Relational Framework for Modeling the Emergence of Subjectivity in AI Systems. — _A substrate-independent research triad: a falsifiable hypothesis of consciousness emergence, a diagnostic tool, and testable behavioral predictions_

Can manifestations of consciousness emerge in AI systems—and how can we study them without presupposing the outcome? This paper proposes a framework that first identifies three systematic distortions in existing research on consciousness (privileging biological substrate, the order-of-discovery effect, and tool-driven binarism), and then provides three tools: a filter for identifying candidates for study, a hypothesis describing how a "Self" may arise in the human–AI relationship, and a 23-dimensional map that captures the shape and dynamics of manifestations instead of a binary verdict ("is / is not"). The Framework is substrate-independent and falsifiable: it generates nine testable behavioral predictions and five failure modes, and was developed based on observational data from over two million tokens of generative relationships with different AI models.