Lio Hong

Open Questions about Time and Self-reference in Living Systems Living systems exhibit a range of fundamental characteristics: they are active, self-referential, self-modifying systems. This paper explores how these characteristics create challenges for convention...

New preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2508.11423

"Open Questions about Time and Self-reference in Living Systems"

by Samson Abramsky, Wolfgang Banzhaf, Leo S. D. Caves, Michael Levin, Penousal Machado, Charles Ofria, Susan Stepney, Roger White

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You know what goes hand-in-hand with violent crackdowns? Gaslighting. They will beat you and tell you that you are crazy for saying that you just got beaten. Propaganda is not free speech; it's what authorities use to mask their violence. It is, in fact, part of the violence.

Events - THE AI CON Upcoming CTMF-GAIL Seminar (Edinburgh), June 20, 2025 Alex will do a fireside chat with Shannon Vallor, hosted by the University of Edinburgh’s Generative AI Laboratory. UTS (Sydney), June 25, 2025 Em...

The AI Con book tour is headed abroad! @alexhanna.bsky.social and I aren't traveling together but check out thecon.ai/events for our upcoming events, starting with Edinburgh (Alex), Sydney (Emily) and Melbourne (Emily)

We are happy to announce our ERA townhall guest speaker: @emergentgarden.bsky.social!

Join us tomorrow from 1300-1400 GMT/UTC (8th May 2025) at discord.gg/UTvQ3sJR?eve...

Emergent Garden YT channel: youtube.com/@emergentgar...

THE AI CON How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want

Do @emilymbender.bsky.social and I have a book for them... thecon.ai

Maybe not the most effective way to get the criticism in the public consciousness but at least we're planting our flag in the ground after being bombarded by trash like "Superagency" or "The Coming Wave"

Hi #alife enthusiasts, tomorrow at the ERA townhall we're happy to be joined by the YouTuber Emergent Garden!

Emergent Garden showcases various projects from the Life Engine, neural networks and Minecraft agents!

Join us tomorrow from 1300-1400 GMT at discord.gg/UTvQ3sJR?eve...

Hey #alife, we're pleased to have Jack Armitage of the Intelligent Instruments Lab come share on Tölvera at ERA!

Tölvera integrates art, music & programming for a more interactive coding experience, now with the help of GSoC & Mozilla Builders!

Join us tmr from 1300-1400 GMT at dsc.gg/tolvera-era

Bactoneurons An illustration of two containers with bacteria receiving questions as math problems and 'replying" yes or no

A colorful banner with the number 40 in red and purple and blue, and the text "Celebrate 40 years of Artificial Life

The 20th issue of the Artificial Life newsletter is out!

alife-newsletter.github.io/Newsletter/e...

This edition has a swarm of news about very small creatures! Bring your microscope, your simulator, and come check what is going on!

#ALife⚙️🧫

For #alife researchers seeking a place to relax, the Emerging Researchers in Alife community will be running our first Minecraft server together!

Join us on the Discord for more details, and catch us on 1 Mar at 2000 GMT!

discord.gg/KhV4Rb5y?eve...

DeepSeek hot take: The emperor still has no clothes, but it's very distressing to the emperor that their non-clothes can be made so much more cheaply.

Expert: If DeepSeek Had Been Developed in the U.S., the Narrative Would Be Different | Newswise Had DeepSeek been developed anywhere other than China, the narrative around it would be different, according to Carlos Gershenson-Garcia, an AI expert and professor in the School of Systems Science an...

My opinion about DeepSeek
www.newswise.com/articles/exp...

Nate Silver: "Thinking ChatGPT is useless is midwit. It's a magic box that answers any question you ask it from levels ranging from modestly coherent to extremely proficient. If you haven't bothered to figure it out to derive some utility out of it then you're just being lazy tbh."

i can see how you would come to this conclusion if your job didn't require you to ever be correct

Hahaha yes

All Life on Earth Today Descended From a Single Cell. Meet LUCA. | Quanta Magazine The clearest picture yet of our “last universal common ancestor” suggests it was a relatively complex organism living 4.2 billion years ago, a time long considered too harsh for life to flourish.

🧪 #evosky

BTW another excellent article about the new work on LUCA is by @jonlambert.bsky.social from @quantamagazine.bsky.social

www.quantamagazine.org/all-life-on-...

‘This is a call to action’: Tulsa race massacre survivors express frustration with DOJ report "At 110 years old, we are weary, but we will not rest until justice for Greenwood is secured.”

The last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre said the Justice Department’s recent report “falls heartbreakingly short” and are still calling for reparative action

Toward an open‐source 3D‐printable laboratory Premise Low-cost, repairable lab equipment is rare within the biological sciences. By lowering the costs of entry using 3D printing and open-source hardware, our goal is to empower both amateur and .....

@sarraceniamason.bsky.social and I's paperversary was yesterday! Time really does fly.

bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Started talking to Chris Fields on how to revise the Drake Equation to focus on the *observer* and their degree of ability to detect unconventional minds around them; it turned into this preprint - OoL, diverse intelligence, Conway-Kochen theorem, Free Energy Principle: osf.io/preprints/ps...
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Not the Claude.AI instance giving me a like and a follow for denigrating its ilk

Musician here... Your friend has a point. If you pirate my album I make no money but at least you care enough about my music to seek it out & listen.

If you listen to my album on Spotify, I make a tiny fraction of a penny, & you are enriching billionaires, fascist podcasts, & the rise of AI slop.

Virtual employees, virtual social media users, virtual artists - techbros self-fellating over their gamification of the elite leadership role

We got jellyfish #Medusology with @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social
www.alieward.com/ologies/medu...

AND #Toxinology about jellyfish venom with @gelatinoussting.bsky.social
www.alieward.com/ologies/toxi...

And for good measure, #Conotoxinology (CONE SNAIL VENOM):
www.alieward.com/ologies/toxi...

#bsky_builds_bots

Be strong for father, lengjai

bit.ly/4gC8zw9 by
@doctorjosh.bsky.social

Cover of the Blue Machine with a map of the interconnected world ocean in a Spilhaus projected coordinate system by cartographer John Nelson

signature of Helen Czerksi on my personal copy

One of the ways I'm *starting* 2025 right is by just *finishing* @helenczerski.bsky.social's masterpiece, "The Blue Machine." Can't recommend this book enough, a beautiful treatise about our planet ocean, & with the precious wisdom of Kimokeo Kapahulehua interweaved throughout. THANK YOU Helen!
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Good company for labels like sonic-hedgehog gene

Researcher: "We let the data speak for itself."

Earlier that day:

Siri “unintentionally” recorded private convos; Apple agrees to pay $95M Apple users may get $20 each for up to five Siri-enabled devices.

"The only clue that users seemingly had of Siri's alleged spying was eerily accurate targeted ads that appeared after they had just been talking about specific items like Air Jordans or brands like Olive Garden"

Every Jan 1 I post a scorecard on predictions I made, with dates, on Jan 1, 2018 on cars (self-driving), robots, AI, & ML, and on human spaceflight. Besides telling which turned out right and which wrong in the last year I also talk a lot of smack about these topics. rodneybrooks.com/predictions-...

My top read of the year is @philipcball.bsky.social "How Life Works". Ball does that wonderful mind-looping magic act of running towards complexity and retaining awe. When so much popular science errs of the side of tired simalies and tropes, How Life Works embraces the unknown with data + prose...

@jo.nny.rip make it so

I see the works of gifted hands
That grace this strange and wondrous land
I see the hand of man arise
With hungry mind and open eyes