Related papers: Against the Empire
Decades of scientific inquiry have sought to understand how evolution fosters cooperation, a concept seemingly at odds with the belief that evolution should produce rational, self-interested individuals. Most previous work has focused on…
One of the main promises of technology development is for it to be adopted by people, organizations, societies, and governments -- incorporated into their life, work stream, or processes. Often, this is socially beneficial as it automates…
Many life-history traits, like the age at maturity or adult longevity, are important determinants of the generation time. For instance, semelparous species whose adults reproduce once and die have shorter generation times than iteroparous…
The future of the human race is urban. The world's population is projected to grow an additional 2.5 billion by 2050, with all expected to live in urban areas. This will increase the percentage of urban population from 55% today to 70%…
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have led to a wide range of predictions about its long-term impact on humanity. A central focus is the potential emergence of transformative AI (TAI), eventually capable of outperforming…
Scientific and technological progress has historically been very beneficial to humanity but this does not always need to be true. Going forward, science may enable bad actors to cause genetically engineered pandemics that are more frequent…
According to the "hard-steps" model, the origin of humanity required "successful passage through a number of intermediate steps" (so-called "hard" or "critical" steps) that were intrinsically improbable with respect to the total time…
We analyze the efficacy of modern neuro-evolutionary strategies for continuous control optimization. Overall, the results collected on a wide variety of qualitatively different benchmark problems indicate that these methods are generally…
A close partnership between people and partially autonomous machines has enabled decades of space exploration. But to further expand our horizons, our systems must become more capable. Increasing the nature and degree of autonomy - allowing…
Anthropic reasoning often begins with the premise that we should expect to find ourselves typical among all intelligent observers. However, in the infinite universe predicted by inflation, there are some civilizations which have spread…
Evolutionary game dynamics is one of the most fruitful frameworks for studying evolution in different disciplines, from Biology to Economics. Within this context, the approach of choice for many researchers is the so-called replicator…
Conventional wisdom holds that a misaligned artificial superintelligence (ASI) will destroy humanity. But the problem of constraining a powerful agent is not new. I apply classic economic logic of interjurisdictional competition,…
This manifesto outlines key principles for progress in the post-AI era, emphasizing non-linear yet cumulative advancement, deep understanding of purpose and context, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and system-level experimentation. It…
Cooperation is the cornerstone of human evolutionary success. Like no other species, we champion the sacrifice of personal benefits for the common good, and we work together to achieve what we are unable to achieve alone. Knowledge and…
Biological and social systems are structured at multiple scales, and the incentives of individuals who interact in a group may diverge from the collective incentive of the group as a whole. Mechanisms to resolve this tension are responsible…
In the original Evolutionary Minority Game, a segregation into two populations with opposing preferences is observed under many circumstances. We show that this segregation becomes more pronounced and more robust if the dynamics are changed…
We provide a review on semi-empirical models of galaxy formation and evolution. We present a brief census of the three main modeling approaches to galaxy evolution, namely hydrodynamical simulations, semi-analytic models, and semi-empirical…
Multi-agent AI systems need behavioral constitutions, but it is unresolved whether such rules should emerge internally through agent self-governance or be discovered externally through optimization. We present the first controlled…
In the past decades human activities caused global Earth system changes, e.g., climate change or biodiversity loss. Simultaneously, these associated impacts have increased environmental awareness within societies across the globe, thereby…
The goal of Artificial Life research, as articulated by Chris Langton, is "to contribute to theoretical biology by locating life-as-we-know-it within the larger picture of life-as-it-could-be" (1989, p.1). The study and pursuit of…