A Short History of AI.
(Lecture 2 of Evolutionary Robotics course.)
youtu.be/eUflmJDxlYA
16.01.2026 18:13
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A Short History of AI.
(Lecture 2 of Evolutionary Robotics course.)
youtu.be/eUflmJDxlYA
New preprint on unifying the zoo of multivariate higher-order information measures into a common form.
May be of interest to anyone interested in higher-order interactions, complex systems, emergence, or complexity.
1/N
arxiv.org/abs/2601.08030
I'm teaching my evolutionary robotics course again, for those who want to follow along.
Lecture 1: why make robots?
youtu.be/FjNNFRDvQgs?...
🚨New paper! 🚨
"The topology of synergy: Linking topological and information-theoretic approaches to higher-order interactions in complex systems"
1/N
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
The caveats and context: bsky.app/profile/thos...
New paper dropped!
Led by @thosvarley.bsky.social and Pai Vaibhav, we show that flows of information within a #xenobot resemble flows of information observed in adult human brains.
Thomas provides caveats and context below.
w/ @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, Caitlin Grasso, & Jeantine Lunshof.
For those interested in our growing body of work on "polycomputation", here's my attempt to summarize it in 40 minutes:
youtu.be/XnObbF2FkE4?...
Lab member Krishna Srinivasan delivers his very first academic presentation at the @alife2025.bsky.social conference.
Go Krishna!
My friend and colleague @drmichaellevin.bsky.social delivering his @alife2025.bsky.social keynote address...
Remotely?
In person?
...?
Lab member Nate Gaylinn describing evolutionary ramps and ratchets @alife2025.bsky.social...
(Paper coming soon...)
Thanks for hosting us Foresight Institute!
(w/ @tarinz.bsky.social and @drmichaellevin.bsky.social)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCq2...
#AIForGood attendees: thanks for the great questions about xenobots!
Some of you asked about the demo. If you missed it, it's here: tinyurl.com/AI4Good25.
Just arrived at the UN's #AIForGood Symposium in Geneva.
Was in time to catch Daniela Rus' talk on AI Governance; I'll be speaking about #xenobots tomorrow.
(Joint work w/ Doug Blackiston, @samkriegman.com & @drmichaellevin.bsky.social).
Looking forward to speaking at the first Biohybrid Robotics Conference tomorrow!
biohybrid-robotics.com
Lab alumnus @samkriegman.com just won a very prestigious NSF CAREER Award.
Congratulations Sam!!
www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...
Reminder that my book "Evolution of Biological Information", which was pandemically overpriced by @princetonupress.bsky.social, is 50% off until May 31, with the checkout code "BLOOM50". That's a reasonable price. press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
So proud of *Dr.* Caitlin Grasso (www.linkedin.com/in/caitlin-g...).
She empowered herself by discovering how to empower machines (bit.ly/3Wwloi4).
Congratulations again Caitlin.
Paging @thosvarley.bsky.social
Can AI drive a shift toward systems that mimic the brain? Can we develop intelligent matter that learns, adapts, and processes information? Check this @nature.com paper @drmichaellevin.bsky.social @doctorjosh.bsky.social ris.utwente.nl/ws/portalfil...
Sorry Hiroki! Their loss.
Today's lecture:
soft robots and differentiable robots.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHa_...
Today's robotics lecture:
evolving bodies and brains.
youtu.be/xYL1Dfu0Odo
Snowflake robotics.
Presented at the 2025 Embodied Intelligence Conference.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbAq...
Today's #robotics lecture:
the evolution of communication.
[Fun stuff starts at 27m]
youtu.be/JxQTaXSTiqI
Today's lecture: swarm robotics.
Again: what could possibly go wrong?
youtu.be/R3_QcxO1LO4
10 co-authors: Doug Blackiston, Hannah Dromiack, Caitlin Grasso, @thosvarley.bsky.social, Doug Moore, Krishna Srinivasan, Olaf Sporns, me, @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, @saraimari.bsky.social.
Special thanks to Sara Imari Walker for keeping all of us focused, for so long.
Great work team!
We published a new xenobot-related paper today:
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
In a nutshell: building xenobots from frog "explants" is good because explants, apparently, come with adaptive potential "built in".
This paper took 6 years and 10 co-authors (see post #2) to reach the light.
Today's lecture: self-replicating #robots.
What could go possibly go wrong?
youtu.be/IAlGZW4EOnc?...
