What Is Life? Evolution as Computation

By Blaise Agüera y Arcas

Antikythera and MIT Press are pleased to announce their new book series with the inaugural title What Is Life? by leading AI researcher and longtime Antikythera collaborator Blaise Agüera y Arcas. Taking its title from theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s 1944 book of the same name, What Is Life? shows how self-reproduction, hence life, is inherently computational.

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Antikythera’s research orbits around five main research themes. As Stanislaw Lem described, some technologies are instrumental, providing new tools through which to change the world. Other technologies are existential, revealing aspects of the world previously unknowable and changing our fundamental capacity to know the world. Computation is both.

Planetary Computation

Considering how computation takes the form of planetary infrastructure that remakes philosophy, science, and society in its image.

Planetary Computation

Considering how computation takes the form of planetary infrastructure that remakes philosophy, science, and society in its image.

Synthetic Intelligence

Investigating the long-term implications of machine intelligence for philosophy, science, and design.

Synthetic Intelligence

Investigating the long-term implications of machine intelligence for philosophy, science, and design.

Recursive Simulations

Exploring the emergence of simulation as an epistemological technology, from scientific simulations to virtual environments.

Recursive Simulations

Exploring the emergence of simulation as an epistemological technology, from scientific simulations to virtual environments.

Hemispherical Stacks

Developing scenarios for e multipolar geopolitics of planetary computation.

Hemispherical Stacks

Developing scenarios for e multipolar geopolitics of planetary computation.

Planetary Sapience

Studying the evolutionary emergence of natural and artificial intelligence towards, and the intentional conception and artificial composition of viable planetary systems.

Planetary Sapience

Studying the evolutionary emergence of natural and artificial intelligence towards, and the intentional conception and artificial composition of viable planetary systems.