Can Evolution Teach AI? with Athena Aktipis

How do you get trillions of cells to collaborate as the single organism that we call you? Does that kind of cooperation create opportunities for hijacking — for example, is cancer a form of “cellular cheating”? Can we take the lessons learned from biology and apply them to understanding politics? And what do models of cooperation tell us about building and living with AI? Join Eagleman with evolutionary biologist and cooperation theorist Athena Aktipis to understand cooperation and competition from cells to societies to our technological future.

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More information

Aktipis A, Cronk L, Alcock J, Ayers JD, Baciu C, Balliet D, Boddy AM, Curry OS, Krems JA, Muñoz A, Sullivan D. Understanding cooperation through fitness interdependence. Nature Human Behaviour. 2018 Jul;2(7):429-31.

Aktipis A. The cheating cell: How evolution helps us understand and treat cancer. Princeton University Press; 2019 Dec 31.

Aktipis Athena (2027). Hijacking. [book coming next year]

Notes:

1) Multicellularity has arisen independently many times, although published counts vary with the definition of simple versus complex multicellularity. See The Multiple Origins of Complex Multicellularity or Cancer across the tree of life: cooperation and cheating in multicellularity

2) The jewel wasp doesn’t simply paralyze the cockroach. It first induces brief paralysis of the front legs, then injects venom into head ganglia, producing prolonged hypokinesia and suppressing spontaneous walking and escape. The cockroach can still perform several coordinated movements. See Parasitoid Jewel Wasp Mounts Multipronged Neurochemical Attack to Hijack a Host Brain

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