249. Blaise Agüera y Arcas with Charles Mudede: What Is Life? Evolution as Computation

Explaining how and why our world works the way it does touches on so many fields of science: biology, chemistry, physics, and, of course, technology. However, according to researcher Blaise Agüera y Arcas, computation should also be part of the understanding of life on all levels – and going back further than one might think.

In What Is Life? Evolution as Computation, Agüera y Arcas uses computation as a means of examining the complexities of our own universe. Inspired by the work of quantum mechanics pioneer Erwin Schrödinger, he revisits the question that has showcased the divide between biology and physics: what is life? How can life and all its attendant complexities come to exist in a random universe, governed by simple laws, whose disorder only increases over time? What Is Life? aims to provide surprising answers, reframing core concepts of self-reproduction, complex growth, and symbiotic relationships as inherently computational.

Agüera y Arcas draws on decades of theory and existing literature from figures like Alan Turing and John von Neumann, as well as recent endeavors in the field of artificial life. From evolution and symbiogenesis to thermodynamics and climate models, What Is Life? explores computation as a tool beyond raw calculation to understand intricate phenomena. This volume serves as a first installment of an ongoing body of work, with his larger book What Is Intelligence? further developing this perspective on intelligence from simple organisms to brains and from societies to AI. What Is Life? is richly illustrated and studded with examples, recontextualizing computational concepts and applications for a general audience curious about diving deeper into the machinations of our living world.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a researcher and author focused on artificial intelligence, sociality, evolution, and software development. He is a VP and Fellow at Google, where he is the CTO of Technology & Society and founder of Paradigms of Intelligence (Pi). He is a frequent speaker at TED and has been featured in the Economist and Noēma, and has previously published the books Who Are We Now? and Ubi Sunt.

Charles Tonderai Mudede is a Zimbabwean-born cultural critic, urbanist, filmmaker, college lecturer, and writer. He is the Senior Staff writer of the Stranger, a lecturer at Cornish College of the Arts, and has collaborated with the director Robinson Devor on three films, two of which Police Beat and Zoo, premiered at Sundance, and one of which, Zoo, screened at Cannes, and the most recent of which, Suburban Fury, premiered at New York Film Festival. (Police Beat is now part of MOMA’s permanent collection.) Mudede, whose essays regularly appear in e-Flux and Tank Magazine, is also the director of Thin Skin (2023).