What is Intelligence? | Antikythera
Authors
Summary
Chapter 1
What Is Intelligence? explores the origins and nature of intelligence by synthesising biology, computer science, and thermodynamics. Agüera y Arcas posits that life is not a mysterious substance but a computational process emerging from the selection for dynamic stability.
The narrative traces the history of life from abiogenesis in deep-sea vents to the emergence of artificial intelligence, framing each step as a “major evolutionary transition” driven by symbiogenesis—the merger of simpler entities into more complex, cooperative wholes. Drawing on the work of Alan Turing and John von Neumann, the book establishes that biological reproduction is a form of universal computation, where DNA serves as an instruction tape for self-modifying “computronium”.
Key themes include:
- Thermodynamics and Entropy: How life maintains order by exploiting free energy, effectively reversing the local effects of the Second Law of Thermodynamics through dynamic kinetic stability and low entropy configurations.
- Artificial Life: Simulations such as “bff” (a minimal Turing machine soup) demonstrate that functional replicators emerge spontaneously from random interactions, given an environment capable of computation.
- Virality and the Genome: The observation that the human genome is largely composed of endogenised retroviruses and transposable elements, suggesting that horizontal gene transfer and viral fusions are primary drivers of genomic complexity.
- Gaia and Technology: A broadening of the definition of life to include homeostatic planetary systems (Gaia) and modern technology, which the author views as the latest symbiotic transition in the history of intelligence.
Ultimately, the book argues for a “multifractal” view of intelligence, where purposiveness and agency emerge at every scale through the hierarchical composition of simpler functions.