Vittorio Loreto
Vittorio Loreto
Sapienza Università di Roma
Sony CSL - Rome
The Adventure of the new: from Laplace to AI
The Adventure of the new: from Laplace to AI
New experiences continually shape our lives—whether through meeting new people, discovering new ideas, or adopting new technologies. While some of these experiences arise by chance, many are influenced by prior novelties, creating a web of correlation and causation. Throughout history, new developments have presented opportunities and challenges, often challenging our innate desire to predict the future. Understanding how novelties emerge and influence our actions is crucial. The intuitive idea that one novelty often leads to another is formally expressed in the concept of the "adjacent possible." This concept encompasses all ideas, structures, and artefacts, just one step beyond our current understanding. It hence can arise from incremental modifications and recombination of existing material. In this talk, I'll present a mathematical framework describing the expansion of the adjacent possible, whose predictions are borne out in several data sets drawn from social and technological systems.
New experiences continually shape our lives—whether through meeting new people, discovering new ideas, or adopting new technologies. While some of these experiences arise by chance, many are influenced by prior novelties, creating a web of correlation and causation. Throughout history, new developments have presented opportunities and challenges, often challenging our innate desire to predict the future. Understanding how novelties emerge and influence our actions is crucial. The intuitive idea that one novelty often leads to another is formally expressed in the concept of the "adjacent possible." This concept encompasses all ideas, structures, and artefacts, just one step beyond our current understanding. It hence can arise from incremental modifications and recombination of existing material. In this talk, I'll present a mathematical framework describing the expansion of the adjacent possible, whose predictions are borne out in several data sets drawn from social and technological systems.