UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
             COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

                            presents

     
	 "Biological morphogenesis as a collective intelligence: 
	 unconventional computing by a multiscale competency architecture"
	

                       Prof. Michael Levin
           (Biology Department, and Director, Allen Discovery Center at Tufts and
               Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology,
                           Tufts University, U.S.A.)

                       2 November 2022 
                        13:00 -14:00 

                  Everyone is Welcome to Attend

                           Over Zoom

Abstract:

All intelligence is collective intelligence, where active components integrate into some degree of competency in a new problem space. Indeed, each of us is a collection of neurons which scale into a coherent, emergent entity controlling muscles to solve behavioral problems via motion in familiar 3D space. Long before that however (both in evolutionary and developmental timescales), our body cells merged into collectives to solve problems in physiological and morphogenetic spaces. In this talk, I will discuss the remarkable ability of cellular networks to competently navigate anatomical morphospace during embryogenesis, regeneration, remodeling, and cancer suppression. This is just one slice of an emerging field of basal cognition, which studies the intelligence of single cells, organs, and swarms. I will discuss briefly the (highly conserved) bioelectric mechanisms that serve as kind of cognitive glue (the computational medium of the collective intelligence) in the brain and in the rest of the body. I will focus on plasticity and novelty, including the examples of our novel synthetic organisms, showing how evolution uses a multiscale competency architecture to produce problem-solving machines with fascinating and untapped capabilities. The isomorphism between conventional intelligence and developmental processes (hinted at by Turing) is a rich source of bi-directional inspiration: not only can biologists greatly benefit from new ideas in computer science, but robotics and AI can reach new vistas by stepping back from an exclusive focus on the brain and implementing the powerful dynamics of ubiquitous biological intelligence.



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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://cs-colloq.cs.herts.ac.uk