The biological research putting purpose back into life | Aeon Essays
Instead of assuming agents were perfectly rational, we allowed there were limits to how smart they were. Instead of assuming the economy displayed diminishing returns (negative feedbacks), we allowed that it might also contain increasing returns (positive feedbacks). Instead of assuming the economy was a mechanistic system operating at equilibrium,
... See moreJessica C. Flack • Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)
We’re entering the agentic era of AI
AI agents have become the next frontier in the evolution of large language models (LLM). In the last few weeks alone, it’s been all the AI leaders can talk about. OpenAI’s Sam Altman called agents AI’s “killer function.” Google’s Demis Hassabis called agents “the next big step change.” Anthropic’s Dario Amodei c... See more
AI agents have become the next frontier in the evolution of large language models (LLM). In the last few weeks alone, it’s been all the AI leaders can talk about. OpenAI’s Sam Altman called agents AI’s “killer function.” Google’s Demis Hassabis called agents “the next big step change.” Anthropic’s Dario Amodei c... See more
Alex Klein • The agentic era of UX
In the century and a half since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, we still are stymied by the complexity of the biosphere, and, just as with our financial systems, our efforts to intervene have often led to confounding results.
Jessica C. Flack • Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)
If we can explain the origin of agency, we can understand how and why purpose comes into existence. That is, we can naturalize teleology.
Bobby Azarian • The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity
And, although it seems obvious that an AI will have qualia and consciousness, we cannot explain those things. So long as we cannot explain them, how can we expect to simulate them in a computer program? Or why should they emerge effortlessly from projects designed to achieve something else? But my guess is that when we do understand them, artificia
... See moreDavid Deutsch • The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
When we pursue knowledge about the origin of life, we’re thinking about what life is. Is life self-replicating information? Is life a new way for the universe to organize energy? Is it, as Carl Sagan and others have put it, a way for the universe to experience—and hope to understand—itself?