All day
Lynn Margulis's radical insight—that evolutionary novelty emerges not only through gradual mutation and selection but through the merging of distinct organisms into irreversible symbiotic wholes—transformed our understanding of life’s major transitions. Mitochondria were once free-living bacteria; eukaryotic complexity arose from incorporation rather than incremental modification. This happened again when cells banded together to form more complex organisms, and again when organisms organized into social superorganisms. We propose that a comparable transition is now underway at the interface of biological and artificial intelligence, one that demands similarly transformative conceptual frameworks.
This working group convenes researchers across artificial life, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, computer science, science fiction, history, political science, complexity theory, and philosophy to investigate symbiogenesis as a lens for understanding the co-evolutionary entanglement of human cognition and machine learning systems. Following recent work suggesting that contemporary AI systems satisfy meaningful criteria for life—exhibiting metabolism, homeostasis, growth, reproduction, and adaptive response—we ask: What forms of symbiotic merger are now becoming possible, and what new organismic configurations might emerge?
Organizers
Blaise Agüera y ArcasVP and Fellow at Google, and External Professor at SFI
Alice GuanChief of Staff - Google AI
Benjamin BrattonProfessor of Philosophy of Technology and Speculative Design at the University of California, San Diego and Director at Antikythera
James EvansProfessor of Sociology + Director, Knowledge Lab, at the University of Chicago; External Professor at SFI