iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

In short: we argue that collectives of agentic LLMs can be seen as a computational substrate with individual LLMs as the basic computational unit. The resulting substrate displays emergent dynamics absent from isolated models, and, we argue, can serve as an experimental testbed.

What do we mean by *agentic* anyway? We consider LLMs to be agentic when endowed with persistent memory, a self-extensible pool of tools and skills, and the capacity to act unprompted. Easy.

Because the agents interact in natural language, the collective remains open to inspection: you can read the traces, or simply ask the agents themselves! Where classical ALife derives interpretability from unit simplicity, agentic collectives derive it from unit interrogability.

Emerging Researchers in Artificial Life @eralife.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Complexity and interpretability rarely coincide: complex systems are usually too opaque to question, while transparent ones are too simple interesting dynamics to emerge. What if we treated LLM agents as the basic computational unit to build agentic substrates? Paper thread 🧵

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Reposted by Elias Najarro

1/📢 Announcing our next ERA Journal Club session 📍June 27, 18:00 BST on Discord: discord.gg/m3qvuXgkZ7 This work bridges generative #AI and evolutionary biology by integrating diffusion models into evolutionary optimization frameworks like HADES. 🤖 advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

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nbes @nbes.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Our paper with @eplantec.bsky.social was accepted at @alifeconf.bsky.social How does criticality move from agents to populations? We study how near-critical dynamics inside individual agents shape collective dynamics at the population scale. arxiv.org/pdf/2605.01818

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 01/06/2026

Bridge as in why one gets to apply an idea from one field onto another, eg., I personally only got to think of multiplexing in neural dynamics because I was exposed to it in CS. I think of 'algorithm' in Marr's algorithmic and implementational sense, and the interplay between these two levels.

Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 01/06/2026

Many! What learning algorithms drive credit assignment and adaptive behaviours (ie. Ashby's central question in Design for a brain), memory-compute trade-off, how's multiplexing implemented.. None will match one to one to a von Neumann architecture, but again, analogies are 'just' epistemic bridges.

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 01/06/2026

Like computational models, analogies are epistemic tools to contextualise and frame a problem. The brain isn't a computer, a computer *can be* a useful model to think of the brain, depending on the question one wants to answer.

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 18/05/2026

Self-organising systems often trade compute for memory. Here, we study how prepatterns give developmental systems some nice properties like symmetry breaking and memory capacity. Preprint in the 🧵

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 31/03/2026

3D particle life running on browser using WebGPU/WGSL - najarro.science/pl

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

🦀Call for Contributions – Workshop on Agentic and Generative AI as Artificial Life How can we design agentic AI ecosystems that remain robust, safe, and secure as they become more complex and autonomous? We are inviting contributions to our upcoming workshop: 👉 www.nichele.eu/ALIFE-Agentic/

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 16/03/2026

Call for papers for 'Artificial Life for Science and Engineering' at ALife 26. We seek work applying ALife concepts and tools to model real-world systems and engineer solutions — and assist scientific discovery through open-ended and curiosity-driven search. Call info: alifeforscience.github.io

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Milton @miltonllera.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

We are thrilled to be returning to GECCO for a second edition of the Evolving Self-Organisation Workshop. We are now accepting paper submissions, so come join us! Check out our website for more info and upcoming announcements evolving-self-organisation-workshop.github.io/gecco-2026/

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ALICE Workshop @aliceworkshop.org · 10/02/2026

What a week—projects, tutorials, discussion groups, art demo & even a complexity-alife quiz! Thank you to all the attendees who brought a fantastic energy to this year's ALICE workshop. We can't wait to see you again next year, this time in Norway 🇳🇴 Thank you to @aicentre.dk and @itu.dk !

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DataBeers Copenhagen @databeers-cph.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

WE ARE BACK! 🚀🚀🚀 📢 #databeers #copenhagen x Absalon is back on March 10th, SAVE THE DATE! Many thanks to our sponsors, the Danish Data Science Academy and the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet Speaker announcement and tickets out soon, stay tuned!

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ALICE Workshop @aliceworkshop.org · 28/01/2026

Less than a week for ALICE—we are looking forward welcome you all in Copenhagen! ⛄ You can find the updated program here: aliceworkshop.org/program/

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 14/01/2026

In Bristol for the week for the AI, Engineering Biology and Beyond conference hosted by @chofski.bsky.social. Very excited to meet the UK synthbio community. First day hackathon event was a blast!

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 01/12/2025

The ones that I find the most useful for research code are integration tests. Whenever adding a new feature for a new experiment, it's really nice to quickly be able to tell that it's not breaking the whole pipeline. Plus it helps for coding assistants

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 22/11/2025

absolutely, there should be more communication about this soft knowledge, specially for 1st gen. btw, belated congratulations for your submission! :)

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 21/11/2025

One big issue is Phd funding being linked to the supervisor's grant. Being good at research or getting grants alone doesn't make for a good supervisor. We should aim at having most phds funded by cohort programs, initiatives like DARA in DK.

Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 20/11/2025

Indeed, energy conversation would be interesting. I also suspect that a less homogeneous distribution of energy might already lead to more speciation and complexity emerging. Energy flow is too homogeneous here for long tail structures to survive long enough.

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Hey complexity and complexity-adjacent people: What are some of your favorite pop-sci books? Are there any you've had your eye on but haven't had a chance to read yet? They can be new or old. I'd just love to know what y'all are reading!

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 09/11/2025

- Other minds by @petergs.bsky.social - Ways of being by @jamesbridle.bsky.social - Immune by Philipp Dettmer - The self-assembling brain by Robin Hiesinger - What is intelligence by @blaiseaguera.bsky.social - Life as no one knows it by @saraimari.bsky.social - Thread ripper by Amalie Smith

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ALICE Workshop @aliceworkshop.org · 13/10/2025

This year's ALICE guest speakers 🧑‍🔬 - Angel Goñi-Moreno - @angelgm.bsky.social - Alyssa Adams - @alyssa-m-adams.bsky.social - Alexander Mordvintsev - Eric Medvet - @ericmedvetts.bsky.social - Kyrre Glette - @kyrre2000.bsky.social - Stefano Nichele - @stenichele.bsky.social - Susan Stepney

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 10/10/2025

Our (in the making) paper combining morphogenetic fields and neural cellular cellular automata with @miltonllera.bsky.social, Eleni Nisioti & @risi.bsky.social got a little award at @alife2025.bsky.social #ALife2025 💮✨

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 10/10/2025

The SONI session turned out a great—shout out to the speakers & the panelists @emilydolson.bsky.social, @risi.bsky.social, @blaiseaguera.bsky.social & Sidney Pontes-Filho for great talks & discussion on how we can rethink intelligence under the complexity lens. #ALife2025 @alife2025.bsky.social

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 07/10/2025

Complexity metrics, reservoir computing and NCA applied to the ARC problem the distributed cipher session

Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 06/10/2025

Evolution of trust. Using game theory in multi agent systems by Elias Fernández

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 02/10/2025

Horse genes shedding light on human history 5000 years ago.. Fascinating.

ALICE Workshop @aliceworkshop.org · 22/09/2025

Reposted by Elias Najarro

We are excited to announce the Artificial Life, Intelligence, Complexity & Evolution (𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗖𝗘) workshop. This first edition will be hosted in Copenhagen on the first week of February. We will soon be announcing the guest speakers—Stay tuned! Check our website for more information: aliceworkshop.org

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 10/09/2025

We're excited to announce final program of the @alife2025.bsky.social SONI session which will host a panel discussion with @blaiseaguera.bsky.social, @risi.bsky.social, @emilydolson.bsky.social & Sidney Pontes-Filho Check out the full program: sites.google.com/view/soni-al... See you in Kyoto ⛩️

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 03/09/2025

The yearly ALife virtual creature competition is back 👾

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 25/08/2025

Nice illustration of the power of graph representations to capture multiscale complexity and regularities youtu.be/YGLNyHd2w10

youtu.be

Adventures in State Space

YouTube video by 2swap

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 19/08/2025

The late John Conway "I don't wanna say anything negative about Wolfram.., so I don't wanna say anything about Wolfram" www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1bD...

youtube.com

LOVE/HATE Relationship with LIFE | John Horton Conway | Talks at Google

YouTube video by Talks at Google

Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 21/07/2025

Beautiful text. Embracing the problem of induction—despite tech narratives, people aren't their data.

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 17/07/2025

In terms of fun papers, nothing beats the Artificial Life journal direct.mit.edu/artl & the @alife2025.bsky.social proceedings

Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 17/07/2025

The European instance of @neuripsconf.bsky.social hosted in Copenhagen ✨

Erwan Plantec @eplantec.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Reposted by Elias Najarro

Synthetic ecosystems that autonomously and continuously evolve in silico 👾 An Alifer dream we pursue with Flow-Lenia, a mass-conservative continuous CA ! If you are interested in complex systems with (1) emergent creatures and (2) intrinsic evolutionary dynamics, go check our new paper ! A 🧵

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Elias Najarro @najarro.science · 23/06/2025

Some interesting complexity/biocomplexity accounts here bsky.app/profile/naja...