Behavior science and psychoanalysis of unconventional intelligences

Professor Michael Levin

Friday, 12 June
11 a.m. (EDT- Eastern USA)

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This webinar will be approximately two hours long.

The vast majority of work in behavioral science, mental health, and philosophy of mind focuses on standard humans, within normal range of post-natal capacities and normal variation. However, developmental biology and evolution suggest a smooth spectrum of embodiments of mind that stretch current brain-focused concepts. Our lab seeks a unification of intelligence and cognitive capacities across a very wide range of natural, engineered, and hybrid forms. We want to be able to detect, communicate with, create, and ethically relate to the entire space of possible minds regardless of their composition or origin story. In this talk, I will discuss advances in the field of diverse intelligence, and show laboratory models in which molecular pathways, cells, and organs exhibit memory and decision-making. I will show the tools we created for communicating with these semi-alien minds, and how we port the techniques and concepts from behavioral science to non-brainy contexts, which has led to advances in regenerative biology and bioengineering. I will then introduce novel living beings we have engineered – both with and without nervous systems – which have new behavioral and physiological properties that are not explained by any specific evolutionary path. This opens a number of fascinating questions with respect to the origin of goals, preferences, and mental architectures of creatures that have never been here before and are not on the evolutionary tree with us. AI is just the tip of the iceberg, with much more difficult and interesting cases of cyborgs, hybrots, biobots, etc. challenging existing models of mind and body. What are the dreams and archetypes of novel beings? How do we help them have a meaningful life, when the comfortable ancient limits of our IQ, lifespan, body, and sensorium no longer apply?  The future of regenerative medicine leads to radical freedom of embodiment, and the future of humanity arguably lies in developing a synthbiosis with such beings. Either way, both we basic scientists, and the mental health professionals, are facing an interesting and disruptive expansion of their subject matter.

Bio
Dr Michael Levin is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts University and Director of the Allen Discovery Center. His background is in computer science and biology, and his group works at the intersection of developmental biophysics, computer science, and cognitive science. He is primarily interested in how intelligence self-organizes in a diverse range of natural, engineered, and hybrid embodiments. Levin has been developing a framework for recognizing and communicating with unconventional cognitive systems; applied to the collective intelligence of cell groups undergoing morphogenesis, these ideas have allowed the Levin lab to develop new applications in birth defects, organ regeneration, and cancer suppression. His lab also produces synthetic life forms, such as Xenobots and Anthrobots, as exploration platforms for patterns of form and behavior in space of possibilities that in-forms systems from simple algorithms to complex animal life.

CPD credits: 2
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