Workshop, 25 July 2024, 13:00-14:40 CEST - Auditorium 4 & Zoom
organized by
Luisa Damiano, Yutetsu Kuruma, Pasquale Stano
A satellite workshop of The 2024 Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE2024), Copenhagen (Denmark), 22-26 July 2024
The synthetic study of natural cognition targets the scientific understanding of self-regulative behaviors, in terms of cognitive processes, by constructing and experimentally exploring artificial models of them. Currently, this research horizon includes different lines of inquiry characterized by ‘bottom-up’ approaches. The main goals are two: on one side, significant deepening in the scientific description of biological cognition; on the other, the construction of artificial systems functioning and behaving like biological systems – from unicellular systems to complex organisms and related (social) aggregates.
SB-AI 9, the Ninth Edition of our Synthetic Biology and Artificial Intelligence workshop series, intends to select original contributions related to this modeling of life and cognition, in its hardware, software and, in particular, wetware expressions. The primary aim is to promote novel AI paradigms, grounded in Synthetic Biology and Artificial Life, preparing the next generation of technological artifacts expressing adaptive and communicational – “cognitive” – biological-like behaviors.
This edition of the SB-AI workshop series focuses on Org(SB-EAI), a research theme at the center of a synonymous project (Damiano, Roli, Stano, 2023-2025) which deals with ‘organizational’ approaches to Embodied AI (EAI). These can be construed as emergent approaches that concentrate on producing synthetic models of biological cognition that are relevant at the level of the biological organization. In other words: models that, instead of targeting a mere imitation of biological cognitive processes, aim at biological plausibility, by attempting to incorporate theories of the biological organization.
This 9th edition of the SB-AI workshop series, related to the Org(SB-AI) Project, aims at bringing together contributions focusing not only to the general topic of SB-AI, but also and specifically to the Org(SB-EAI) research theme, and investigating one or more aspects of the (possible/actual) relationships between the synthetic approach to biology and EAI.
Organizers
Pasquale Stano (University of Salento, Italy)
Luisa Damiano (Università IULM, Italy)
Yutetsu Kuruma (JAMSTEC, Japan)
Thursday 25 July 2024
13:00-13:05 Organizers. Introduction
13:05-13:25 Sergio Rubin. Theoretical Cartography of Autopoiesis
13:25-13:45 Takashi Ikegami. Where is Free Will? In case of oil droplets and Tetrahymena
13:45-14:05 Amahury Jafet Lopez Diaz. The Origin and Evolution of Information Handling
14:05-14:25 Johan Medrano. Reverse-engineering artificial life under the free-energy principle?
14:25-14:40 Discussion and closing remarks
Theoretical Cartography of Autopoiesis
Sergio Rubin, University IULM, Milan
The intent of the present work is to advance the precision with which different Formal Systems (FS) may be observed to comply (preserve correspondence) with Molecular Autopoiesis (MA) in its worldly state as a Natural System (NS). The modeling relation between MA and the range of FS proposed as potentially illuminating their processes forecloses the applicability of Turing-based algorithmic computational models. This outcome indicates that MA, as modelled through Varela's calculus of self-reference or more especially through Rosen's (M,R)-system, is essentially anticipatory without violating structural determinism nor causality whatsoever, hence enaction may involve it. This quality may capture a fundamentally different mode of being in living systems as opposed to mechanical-computational systems. Implications in different fields of biology from the origin of life to planetary biology as well as in cognitive science and artificial intelligence are of interest.
Where is Free Will? In case of oil droplets and Tetrahymena
Takashi Ikegami, University of Tokyo
Free will is considered distinct from mere random processes and deterministic chaos. Through examples involving oil droplets composed of ethyl salicylate (ES) and paraffin on SDS, as well as Tetrahymena thermophila cells on a petri dish, we explore the underlying mechanisms of these self-moving systems.
The Origin and Evolution of Information Handling
Amahury J. López-Díaz (with Hiroki Sayama and Carlos Gershenson), Binghamton University
A major challenge when describing the origin of life is to ex plain how instructional information control systems emerge naturally and spontaneously from mere molecular dynamics. So far, no one has clarified how information control emerged ab initio and how primitive control mechanisms in life might have evolved, becoming increasingly refined. Based on re cent experimental results showing that chemical computation does not require the presence of life-related chemistry, we elucidate the origin and early evolution of information handling by chemical automata, from information processing (computation) to information storage (memory) and information transmission (communication). In contrast to other theories that assume the existence of initial complex structures, our narrative starts from trivial self-replicators whose interaction leads to the arising of more powerful molecular machines. By describing precisely the primordial transitions in chemistry-based com putation, our metaphor is capable of explaining the above mentioned gaps and can be translated to other models of com putation, which allow us to explore biological phenomena at multiple spatial and temporal scales. At the end of our manuscript, we propose some ways to extend our ideas, including experimental validation of our theory (both in vitro and in silico).
Reverse-engineering artificial life under the free-energy principle?
Johan Medrano, University College of London
The free-energy principle (FEP) offers a foundational approach to understanding adaptive behaviour and engineering adaptive systems. In this talk, we explore how the FEP can be utilized to decompose, analyse, and reverse-engineer biological systems. Using chemical autonomous agents as a case study, we demonstrate how the FEP enables us to identify the partition of system states that belong to the agent and to reveal how the agent synchronizes its internal states with its environment. We also discuss future developments and challenges in advancing the FEP as a systematic framework for reverse-engineering artificial life.
Paper Submission Deadline: 15 June 2024
Notification of Acceptance: 30 June 2024
Program publication on this website: 20 July 2024
Workshop Date: 25 July 2024; 13:00-14:45 CEST
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