iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Josh Bongard

Thomas F. Varley @thosvarley.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

New preprint on unifying the zoo of multivariate higher-order information measures into a common form. May be of interest to anyone interested in higher-order interactions, complex systems, emergence, or complexity. 1/N arxiv.org/abs/2601.08030

arxiv.org

The many faces of multivariate information

Extracting higher-order structures from multivariate data has become an area of intensive study in complex systems science, as these multipartite interactions can reveal insights into fundamental feat...

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

I'm teaching my evolutionary robotics course again, for those who want to follow along. Lecture 1: why make robots? youtu.be/FjNNFRDvQgs?...

youtu.be

Lecture 1 of Evolutionary Robotics. Logistics, and why make robots?

YouTube video by Josh Bongard

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

New paper dropped! Led by @thosvarley.bsky.social and Pai Vaibhav, we show that flows of information within a #xenobot resemble flows of information observed in adult human brains. Thomas provides caveats and context below. w/ @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, Caitlin Grasso, & Jeantine Lunshof.

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

For those interested in our growing body of work on "polycomputation", here's my attempt to summarize it in 40 minutes: youtu.be/XnObbF2FkE4?...

youtu.be

Computational granular metamaterials (CGMMs)

YouTube video by Josh Bongard

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Lab member Krishna Srinivasan delivers his very first academic presentation at the @alife2025.bsky.social conference. Go Krishna!

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

My friend and colleague @drmichaellevin.bsky.social delivering his @alife2025.bsky.social keynote address... Remotely? In person? ...?

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Lab member Nate Gaylinn describing evolutionary ramps and ratchets @alife2025.bsky.social... (Paper coming soon...)

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

#AIForGood attendees: thanks for the great questions about xenobots! Some of you asked about the demo. If you missed it, it's here: tinyurl.com/AI4Good25.

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Just arrived at the UN's #AIForGood Symposium in Geneva. Was in time to catch Daniela Rus' talk on AI Governance; I'll be speaking about #xenobots tomorrow. (Joint work w/ Doug Blackiston, @samkriegman.com & @drmichaellevin.bsky.social).

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

Looking forward to speaking at the first Biohybrid Robotics Conference tomorrow! biohybrid-robotics.com

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Lab alumnus @samkriegman.com just won a very prestigious NSF CAREER Award. Congratulations Sam!! www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...

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Reposted by Josh Bongard

Chris Adami @chrisadami.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Reminder that my book "Evolution of Biological Information", which was pandemically overpriced by @princetonupress.bsky.social, is 50% off until May 31, with the checkout code "BLOOM50". That's a reasonable price. press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

press.princeton.edu

The Evolution of Biological Information

Why information is the unifying principle that allows us to understand the evolution of complexity in nature

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

So proud of *Dr.* Caitlin Grasso (www.linkedin.com/in/caitlin-g...). She empowered herself by discovering how to empower machines (bit.ly/3Wwloi4). Congratulations again Caitlin.

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Reposted by Josh Bongard

Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Can AI drive a shift toward systems that mimic the brain? Can we develop intelligent matter that learns, adapts, and processes information? Check this @nature.com paper @drmichaellevin.bsky.social @doctorjosh.bsky.social ris.utwente.nl/ws/portalfil...

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Snowflake robotics. Presented at the 2025 Embodied Intelligence Conference. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbAq...

youtube.com

Josh Bongard: SNOWFLAKE ROBOTICS

YouTube video by AgriFoRwArdS CDT YouTube Channel

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

We published a new xenobot-related paper today: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... In a nutshell: building xenobots from frog "explants" is good because explants, apparently, come with adaptive potential "built in". This paper took 6 years and 10 co-authors (see post #2) to reach the light.

journals.plos.org

Revealing non-trivial information structures in aneural biological tissues via functional connectivity

Author summary A central challenge in understanding several diverse processes in biology, including morphogenesis, wound healing, and development, is learning from empirical data how information is in...

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Reposted by Josh Bongard

Hiroki Sayama @hirokisayama.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Nam Le presents swarm models that show emergence of higher-order evolutionary entities #NERCCS2025

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Reposted by Josh Bongard

Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 04/04/2025

This was a brilliant conference. Soft robotics, swarms, human and animal behaviour and biology, dinosaurs, you name it. So much to see, videos are online. I'll post a few personal highlights below. Is there a nascent #EmbodiedIntelligence community on Bluesky?

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Today's robotics lecture: the GOLEM project. Robots, evolution, 3D printers, Jewish folklore... what's not to love? youtu.be/EOBNAwcdXXo?...

youtu.be

2025 Evolutionary robotics course. Lecture 21. The GOLEM project.

YouTube video by Josh Bongard

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Great example of embodied cognition demonstrated by Thrishantha Nanayakkara just now at the embodied-intelligence.org conference: youtu.be/oZbZZlDDEnc

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

The Embodied Intelligence conference embodied-intelligence.org starts tomorrow. Looking forward to re/connecting with old/new friends and colleagues.

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Reposted by Josh Bongard

Joachim W Pedersen @joachimwpedersen.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnoa... Bio-Inspired Plastic Neural Nets that continually adapt their own synaptic strengths can make for extremely robust locomotion policies! Trained exclusively in simulation, the plastic networks transfer easily to the real world, even under various extra OOD situations.

youtube.com

[IROS25] Bio-Inspired Plastic Neural Nets for Zero-Shot Out-of-Distribution Generalization in Robots

YouTube video by Worasuchad Haomachai

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Today's evolutionary #robotics lecture: bipedal locomotion. In which John Cleese and yours truly demonstrate several silly walks. youtu.be/4o9CZK8Azcw

youtu.be

2025 Evolutionary robotics course. Lecture 16. Bipedal locomotion.

YouTube video by Josh Bongard

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Reposted by Josh Bongard

Hiroki Sayama @hirokisayama.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Now #IEEEALIFECIS2025 officially kicks off! Stefano Nichele introduces IEEE ALIFE-CIS keynote Luca Manzoni, who discusses the true origin of ALIFE, the work by Nils Barricelli

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Reposted by Josh Bongard

Hiroki Sayama @hirokisayama.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

#IEEESSCI2025 first keynote Metin Sitti discusses the importance of physical body in intelligence

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Reposted by Josh Bongard

Physicians for a Healthy Democracy @physiciandemocracy.medsky.social · 08/03/2025

Stand Up for Science Burlington, Vermont

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Reposted by Josh Bongard

Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

1/46 Hey folks, we have a new paper out on the MuLTEE. Strap in and I’ll tell you the story of how this “little paper on polyploidy” turned into the most data rich paper our lab has produced, largely thanks to the leadership and work ethic of @kaitong25.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Genome duplication in a long-term multicellularity evolution experiment - Nature

In the Multicellularity Long Term Evolution Experiment, diploid yeast evolve to be tetraploid under selection for larger multicellular size, revealing how whole-genome duplication can arise due to its...

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

@drmichaellevin.bsky.social presents to the United Nations on how xenobots (Doug Blackiston & @samkriegman.com), anthrobots (Gizem Gumuskaya), and other discoveries from his lab can serve as "agential materials" that AI can employ to interface with the body. www.youtube.com/live/T40utCZ...

youtube.com

AI as a translator interface to the wisdom of the living body

YouTube video by AI for Good

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Josh Bongard @doctorjosh.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Today's #robotics lecture: selective attention. Now that I've posted this, I should get back to what I was working on before... ...if only I could remember what that was. youtu.be/BKzOfR9zWCc

youtu.be

2025 Evolutionary robotics course. Lecture 14. Active Categorical Perception.

YouTube video by Josh Bongard

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Reposted by Josh Bongard

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 27/02/2025

Every single philanthropic institution needs to do this rather than retracting right now. abcnews-go-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/abcnews....

abcnews-go-com.cdn.ampproject.org

MacArthur Foundation to increase giving for two years in response to 'crisis'

The John D

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