Synthetic ecosystems that autonomously and continuously evolve in silico 👾 An Alifer dream we pursue with Flow-Lenia, a mass-conservative continuous CA ! If you are interested in complex systems with (1) emergent creatures and (2) intrinsic evolutionary dynamics, go check our new paper ! A 🧵

What makes a new kind of mind possible? In this @royalsocietypublishing.org paper, the authors explain why cognitive transitions are not just moments when animals became smarter, but evolutionary shifts that opened new spaces of cognition. @eplantec.bsky.social pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Can a single cell behave like a Bayesian agent? In this new paper by @maorknak.bsky.social, E Casacuberta & @multicellgenome.bsky.social show that eukaryotic cells trained with reliable cues survived stress better by using Bayesian guesses @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social journals.aps.org/prxlife/pdf/...

Do critical neurons lead to critical brains ? Critical fishes to critical flocks ? Critical ants to critical colonies ? That's what we explore in this new work led by @nbesnbesnbes : How dynamical regimes transfer through scales ? 📜 arxiv.org/abs/2605.01818

Emergent Macro-Criticality from Micro-Critical Agents

Criticality has been proposed as a key principle underlying complex behavior in biological and artificial systems; however, how criticality translates from individual dynamics to collective behavior r...

arxiv.org

nbes@nbes.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Our paper with @eplantec.bsky.social was accepted at @alifeconf.bsky.social How does criticality move from agents to populations? We study how near-critical dynamics inside individual agents shape collective dynamics at the population scale. arxiv.org/pdf/2605.01818

Far from the logic of optimums, evolution is a beautiful dynamical system of dancing species

What a strange time we are living in. As astronauts travel far into the silence of space, carrying with them the brilliance, curiosity, and collective dreams of our species, an ignorant, corrupt bully leads the most powerful country and threatens to “erase an entire civilisation.” We must stop him.

Is the universe really fine-tuned for life? The claim that even tiny changes in fundamental constants would make life impossible (the God-needed argument) is been dismantled by recent research: Life can emerge under a wide range of physical conditions ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019PhR....

Curious about the origin of development during the transition to multicellularity? A very belated preprint alert: bit.ly/4rr2mHU Reproduction emerges from ecological interactions at the onset of multicellularity. A short 🧵 with lots of videos...

We are thrilled to be returning to GECCO for a second edition of the Evolving Self-Organisation Workshop. We are now accepting paper submissions, so come join us! Check out our website for more info and upcoming announcements evolving-self-organisation-workshop.github.io/gecco-2026/

The SONI session turned out a great—shout out to the speakers & the panelists @emilydolson.bsky.social, @risi.bsky.social, @blaiseaguera.bsky.social & Sidney Pontes-Filho for great talks & discussion on how we can rethink intelligence under the complexity lens. #ALife2025 @alife2025.bsky.social

We are excited to announce the Artificial Life, Intelligence, Complexity & Evolution (𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗖𝗘) workshop. This first edition will be hosted in Copenhagen on the first week of February. We will soon be announcing the guest speakers—Stay tuned! Check our website for more information: aliceworkshop.org

1 To predict the behaviour of a primate, would you rather base your guess on a closely related species or one with a similar brain shape? We looked at brains & behaviours of 70 species, you’ll be surprised! 🧵Thread on our new preprint with @r3rt0.bsky.social , doi.org/10.1101/2025...

How do ant colonies perform computations? What kind of dynamical state allows them to do it? It has already been 30 years since my colleague, Octavio Miramontes, and I suggested that they, as liquid neural networks, might exploit critical states. Check: hal.elte.hu/~vicsek/down...

I don't know why, I just love these cell simulations :)

Erwan Plantec@eplantec.bsky.social · last yr.

Synthetic ecosystems that autonomously and continuously evolve in silico 👾 An Alifer dream we pursue with Flow-Lenia, a mass-conservative continuous CA ! If you are interested in complex systems with (1) emergent creatures and (2) intrinsic evolutionary dynamics, go check our new paper ! A 🧵

Extended Flow-Lenia paper is out in the ALife journal, with more experiments and insights! See 🧵 from 1st-author @eplantec.bsky.social for a summary. For a full overview of our research in Artificial Life, here is a talk I gave at the Demeco workshop at EPFL : youtube.com/watch?v=YYFr...

Clément Moulin-Frier -- Self-Organization of Agents and Ecosystems from Scratch in (Flow-)Lenia

YouTube video by Demeco

youtube.com

Erwan Plantec@eplantec.bsky.social · last yr.

Synthetic ecosystems that autonomously and continuously evolve in silico 👾 An Alifer dream we pursue with Flow-Lenia, a mass-conservative continuous CA ! If you are interested in complex systems with (1) emergent creatures and (2) intrinsic evolutionary dynamics, go check our new paper ! A 🧵

Synthetic ecosystems that autonomously and continuously evolve in silico 👾 An Alifer dream we pursue with Flow-Lenia, a mass-conservative continuous CA ! If you are interested in complex systems with (1) emergent creatures and (2) intrinsic evolutionary dynamics, go check our new paper ! A 🧵

New video on the recently discovered Mosura is up on my channel! #paleoart #mosura #3DAnimation #SciArt www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynHJ...

Mothra Radiodont

YouTube video by Kiabugboy

youtube.com

Dr. Joe Moysiuk@cambrojoe.bsky.social · last yr.

Introducing Mosura fentoni, a new radiodont from the #BurgessShale. Paper here: doi.org/10.1098/rsos.2… This #fossil species has 3 eyes, spiny claws, wing-shaped swimming flaps, and a unique abdomen-like body region.

Two types of brains have emerged in nature: solid (ours) and liquid (ant colonies, immune system). What can be computed by liquid brains? How complex are they? Check our paper on the statistical physics of liquid brains @jordipinero.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

How can biological systems anticipate future events? In our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social, we show how a simple genetic circuit can predict future trends through a simple (and perhaps widespread) mechanism @drmichaellevin.bsky.social @koseskalab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Ever wonder what a neural network would look like in a novel organism w/o selection for specific structure and function? New #preprint with morphological, behavioral, electrophysiological, and transcriptomic analysis of a new kind of Xenobot with a nervous system: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Announcing SONI: Self-Organising Neural Intelligence(s) 🧠 An #ALife2025 special session to bring together AI & ALife communities to explore how self-organisation can contribute to neural paradigms of intelligence. Call for papers sites.google.com/view/soni-al... |Submission deadline: May 4th

Self-Organising Neural Intelligence(s)

Important dates: Submission Deadline: May 4th, 2025 Author Notification: TBA

sites.google.com

Today #complexitycat kicks off its Interview column featuring one of the most iconic researchers in #ArtificialLife: @hirokisayama.bsky.social. What are the most important challenges for this field? Can we really achieve open-ended evolution? This and more here.🐈‍⬛👇 amahury.github.io/posts/interv...

The Art of Making Things Evolve

For decades Hiroki Sayama has sought to achieve what a century ago would have been mere science fiction—creating life on our computers.

amahury.github.io

Zelensky is a wartime leader watching his people suffer and die under Russian attacks every day. To be lectured and lied to by Trump and Vance, as they defend the war criminal dictator committing these atrocities, is unimaginable agony. An everlasting shame for America.

Jim Sciutto@jimsciutto.bsky.social · last yr.

Trump has not uttered a critical word about Putin but he and his VP publicly belittled the leader of the nation Putin invaded.

Today's #robotics lecture: selective attention. Now that I've posted this, I should get back to what I was working on before... ...if only I could remember what that was. youtu.be/BKzOfR9zWCc

2025 Evolutionary robotics course. Lecture 14. Active Categorical Perception.

YouTube video by Josh Bongard

youtu.be

Le 7 janvier, Donald Trump avait estimé que les pays membres de l’OTAN devraient désormais consacrer à leur défense non plus 2 % mais 5 % de leur produit intérieur brut (PIB). ↓

Today's evolutionary #robotics lecture: Minimal cognition. Continued. youtu.be/uWh07Cp5Ynk?...

2025 Evolutionary robotics course. Lecture 13. Minimal cognition continued.

YouTube video by Josh Bongard

youtu.be

The breakneck pace and devastating impact of the Trump administration’s policy changes has researchers shocked. https://go.nature.com/4iboVwb

Trump’s siege of science: how the first 30 days unfolded and what’s next

Nature - The breakneck pace and devastating impact of the administration’s policy changes has researchers shocked.

go.nature.com

How do parasites expand the genomic complexity of life? In our new paper on "Turing parasites" with Luis Seoane @brigan.bsky.social shows how a computational model of host-parasite coevolution displays open-ended evolution journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...

Planetary Life, a game about planet, life and evolution simulation! ✅ Procedural planets 🌍 ✅ Climate simulation ⛈️ ✅ Global disasters 🌋☄️ ✅ Create and evolve creatures 🐟🦎🐞 ✅ Create and evolve plants 🌱🌴🌲 ⬜ Cells #GodotEngine #gamedev #indiedev

New paper w/ Luke Strgar sites.google.com/view/co-desi... ...in a nutshell: ⛰️ differentiable physics 🏋️ morphological pretraining 🧠 a universal controller 🧬 zero shot evolution 💡 adaptive phototaxis ☠️ diversity collapse 🔧 generational finetuning 🦘 few shot evolution