Program
Artificial Life Special Session
Kyoto, October 6th 2025
Kyoto, October 6th 2025
October 9th (Thursday) —14.00 : 17.30 | Room 4-B
14.00 - 15.30 : Contributed papers presentations (15min + 5min questions)
15.30 - 16.00 : Coffee Break ☕
16.00 - 16.40 : Contributed papers presentations (15min + 5min questions)
16.40 - 17.30 : Panel discussion: Self-Organization: a new paradigm of intelligence? Panelists: Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Emily Dolson, Sidney Pontes-Filho.
17.30 : Special session ends
🎤 Afterhours academic karaoke: the session conversation will continue at traditional japanese karaoke bar. Details will be provided during the session.
The special session will host a panel to discuss the the past, present and future connections between self-organisation and intelligence with Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Emily Dolson, Sidney Pontes-Filho.
Blaise Aguera y Arcas - Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a VP and Fellow at Google, where he is the CTO of Technology & Society and founder of Paradigms of Intelligence (Pi). Pi is an organization working on basic research in AI and related fields, especially the foundations of neural computing, active inference, sociality, evolution, and Artificial Life.
Emily Dolson is the PI of the ECODE Lab—Evolutionary Control of Digital Ecologies Lab. She studies eco-evolutionary dynamics using digital systems at broad spatiotemporal scales. She investigates the evolutionary and ecological processes that generate and maintain biodiversity, connecting this research to machine learning through evolutionary computation. She has formal training in Computer Science, Evolutionary Biology, and Ecology.
Sidney Pontes-Filho is a computer scientist who specialized in Artificial Intelligence. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and works as a Ph.D. fellow at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). He received his B.Sc. in Computer Science in 2013 from Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil, and M.Sc. in Computer Science in 2018 from Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. His current research interests are complex systems, unconventional computing, computational neuroscience, and artificial general intelligence.
Sebastian Risi director of the Creative AI Lab, and co-direct the Robotics, Evolution and Artificial Life Lab (REAL). He is an Artificial Intelligence researcher that aims to make machines more adaptive and creative. His research focuses on computational evolution, deep learning, and crowdsourcing, with applications in robotics, video games, design, and art.