The utility function can be specified in a way to build up something that looks like an internal motivation system. This is often referred to as intrinsically m

The utility function can be specified in a way to build up something that looks like an internal motivation system. This is often referred to as intrinsically motivated reinforcement learning. A recent paper by 2 Google Deepmind researchers on this topic: Variational Information Maximisation for Intrinsically Motivated Reinforcement Learning Shakir Mohamed and Danilo J. Rezende http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.08731 http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.08731 and a somewhat older survey paper on the same topic: How can we define intrinsic motivation? Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Frederic Kaplan http://www.pyoudeyer.com/epirob08OudeyerKaplan.pdf http://www.pyoudeyer.com/epirob08OudeyerKaplan.pdf