Life, learning and emergence

What is life? Darwin’s theory provides a qualitative understanding of evolution. But from a physics perspective, we don’t know how life got started in the first place. We investigate the thermodynamic basis for emergent self-replication and adaptation, of which biology is just one instance. Can this be used to engineer artificial digital life? Can evolution itself be made a predictive science?

How do we make intelligent machines? Far from approaching artificial general intelligence, AI is stuck in high-dimensional curve-fitting. We seek mathematical insights that could lead to more intelligent AI, such as causal reasoning, reusable functional modules, and a representation of the environment. We investigate ways to use computation and AI to automate the search for new mathematical insights. Are there fundamental limits to AI, and what might this tell us about human intelligence?

What are the emergent properties of digital and neural computation, and might this shed light on autonomy and free will? We study information processing at the genetic level and the functional architecture of gene regulatory networks. We seek a theoretical understanding of cell programming and how to infer programming sets. Is causality itself an emergent phenomenon, as we traverse across different organisational length scales?