Videos

Michael Levin, a leading biologist, discusses his interdisciplinary work at the intersection of biology, computer science, and philosophy, focusing on how embodied minds emerge in the physical world. He introduces the "spectrum of persuadability" as an engineering-centric view of intelligence, where systems exhibit varying degrees of agency and responsiveness to different types of interaction. He defines a "cognitive light cone" as the maximum goal-state size an agent can actively pursue, arguing that life is characterized by parts aligning towards larger goals incomprehensible to individual components. Levin presents his lab's creation of novel synthetic organisms like Xenobots and Anthrobots, demonstrating emergent behaviors not directly selected by evolution. Furthermore, he explores unexpected "intelligent" behaviors, such as delayed gratification and clustering, in simple sorting algorithms, suggesting that complex competencies can emerge from minimal systems without explicit programming. He posits a "Platonic space" of underlying mathematical and cognitive truths that influence physical reality, providing "free lunches" for biological and computational systems, and proposes that all physical objects act as interfaces to these patterns. The discussion advocates for an empirical, interdisciplinary approach to understanding intelligence, moving beyond rigid categories.