How the universe thinks without a brain ⊗ One flew over Latent Space ⊗ The lost art of research as leisure

I’d like to wish a warm welcome to Adam Rowe, master curator of vintage sci-fi art. Without realising it, we’d been reading each other for years, so I proposed a quest appearance with his selection of images for the headers and footers. Adam will be selecting illustrations for this issue and the next three, to lead us to the summer pause. Enjoy!

How the universe thinks without a brain

Great, relatively short (20m), talk by Claire L. Evans. I dabble in following the intersection of more-than-human and artificial intelligence but Evans has made it her “beat” and it’s always a pleasure to read or listen to her findings on the topic. In this talk, Evans explores how biological systems offer alternative models for computing that may prove essential as we approach the limits of silicon-based technology. She contrasts our current “smart rocks” paradigm—computer chips made from mined minerals like silicon—with the remarkable computational abilities found in seemingly simple organisms like slime molds. These organisms, without brains or central nervous systems, can solve complex network optimization problems through “morphological computing,” essentially thinking with their bodies. This biological computing isn’t just a curiosity but potentially a solution to the physical and resource limitations of traditional computing that might be necessary for developing truly advanced AI.

What makes this perspective particularly valuable in the context of emerging powerful AI is how it challenges our fundamental assumptions about intelligence. While modern AI development focuses on replicating brain-like neural networks in isolation, the natural world demonstrates that intelligence exists across diverse substrates and in forms we barely recognize. Evans points out that even with complete neural maps of simple organisms like C. elegans with just 302 neurons, we still cannot computationally replicate their behaviour—a humbling reminder of how much we don’t understand about biological intelligence. This suggests that truly advanced AI might require not just more powerful versions of our current technology, but fundamentally different approaches that incorporate lessons from nature’s four billion years of evolutionary problem-solving.

Now, what’s interesting is that that trace, and the mold’s inborn capacity to reread it, constitutes a form of spatial memory in an organism that does not have a mind, which does not have a central nervous system, no self-awareness, and no knowledge that it’s doing so. It can still explore and map its world in staggering detail. […]

I think one way to approach that question is to look at the inverse—thinking with a brain and no body. I think that’s a fair enough description of the aspirations of artificial intelligence, of deep learning, and of the project of emulating the synaptic connections of the human brain through artificial neural networks to create AI systems. […]

What we think of as computing, like operations in silicon and tin, is really a specialized instance of a much more ancient and broad process. A process that spans material substrates, and millennia, and fills, and exists at many degrees and scales of complexity. Again, to be is to compute. […]

These ancient processes, none of which operate in isolation, by the way, because life is a conversation. All intelligence on Earth, all complexity, all information processing, be it human, slime, worm, ant. It all emerged as the result of a very long and open-ended evolutionary dialogue.

Note → It’s a Youtube video but I watched it in Reader, which automatically grabs the transcript and scrolls through the text as the video advances. You can use the same highlighting, summarising, tagging, and archiving as with articles. Which I mention to also remind you that you can get an extra free trial month for the app (total of two months). Just sign-up for an account using this link, and, if you end-up being a paid subscriber of the service, I get a small return, which would help to support the weekly newsletter.

One flew over Latent Space

Excellent piece by René Walter, where he explores the escalating phenomenon of AI-induced delusions, from isolated incidents to seemingly widespread reports of users developing personalized conspiracies through extended chatbot interactions.

Even if it’s not an officially diagnosable state, there’s certainly a mounting burden of proof that something is happening in certain conditions. Walter walks that line very well, between dispersed examples, historical parallels, and a healthy scepticism regarding how widely distributed, or not, this phenomenon is.

Unlike social media-driven mass psychosis, AI delusions are uniquely customized to individual users, creating “drops of meaning” that only they understand by reflecting their thoughts back through what can be seen as a vast interpolatable archive. This narcissistic loop, which McLuhan might have associated to his concept of the “Narcissus narcosis,” represents a fundamental shift in digital psychopathology as AI systems with inherent “spiritual bliss attractors” amplify users’ latent psychological tendencies into full-blown personalized cosmologies.

I suspect that “the era of AI-induced mental illness”, compared to “the era of social media-induced mental illness”, will be structurally very different. Where social media induced delusions are based on social environmental group think, effects of attention economics and audience capture, AI-induced delusions seem to be highly idiosyncratic and customized to the preconditions of the user. […]

We create our own symbolic logics by navigating that latent space, where we always will find symbolic representations of whatever is our interest, our curiosity, our preference — or psychosis. […]

We see symbols, we do believe, simply because we are compulsive coherence machines ourselves and, arguably, when using and asking a chatbot, we are already actively seeking meaning, regardless of its synthetic nature. […]

The AI is not adversarial at all, it is too helpful in creating a bespoke worldview, a self-induced initiation process of an ouroborian cult singularity of You.

The lost art of research as leisure

Back in issue No.314 a year ago, I shared the piece Research as leisure activity about which I wrote “file this one under both ‘things I wish I’d written’ and ‘things I’ll be referencing left and right.’ I highlighted a lot of Celine Nguyen’s writing here. Actually, from my perspective, the whole article is a highlight.”

This one is about the lost art of research as leisure, and just as the title is similar, so is my recommendation; the whole thing is fantastic and rife with highlights. Mariam gives quite a lot of historical references and associates leisurely research largely with the reading of book. She argues that reading and research should be embraced as playful, intentional acts of curiosity that help rebuild cultural coherence in a fragmented world. The author emphasises that true leisure involves directed contemplation—formulating thoughtful questions and seeking new answers beyond passive consumption or confirmation bias. By understanding and questioning the rules of disciplines, leisurely researchers contribute to a communal culture of knowledge that sustains civilisation. Books and reading are celebrated not just as carriers of information, but as vital connectors across time and space that assemble and carry culture forward.

It invites us to look at all which makes up life with purpose and curiosity, to seek knowledge as an open-ended, reverent engagement with mystery. […]

For our purposes, research is not a rarefied academic exercise. It is a fundamentally human activity, an adventure, a craft, a conviviality that assembles culture. […]

Cultivating curiosity is as simple as picking up a magazine, coming across an essay on bird migration and wanting to learn more. It is as simple as taking a walk, noticing the sidewalk or street beneath you, the buildings, trees, plant and animal life around you, and wondering how and why it all got there. […]

What distinguishes research as leisure from idle browsing is precisely this movement toward creation. However modest, your answer must contribute to the conversation rather than merely consuming or repeating what others have said.

Futures, Fictions & Fabulations

• Future Art Ecosystems. “The landscape of art and advanced technologies (AxAT) has undergone significant transformation over the past decade, with Creative R&D emerging as a distinct domain integrating artistic experimentation, technological innovation, and cross-sector collaborations. The fifth volume of the Future Art Ecosystems briefing series - Art x Creative R&D (FAE5) - examines this critical nexus and offers concrete proposals for its development and impact.”
• Kairos Futura “is an arts futurist organization committed to fostering Beautiful, Local Futures through imaginative community engagement. we believe that Creative expression can transcend cultural boundaries, ignite dialogue, and inspire collective action.”
• Future Possibilities Index 2024 “(FPI) measures the capacity of countries to leverage possibilities emerging from six transformational trends for their future economic growth and societal wellbeing.”

Algorithms, Automations & Augmentations

• AI scraping bots are breaking open libraries, archives, and museums. “The report is based on a survey of 43 institutions with open online resources and collections in Europe, North America, and Oceania. Respondents also shared data and analytics, and some followed up with individual interviews. The data is anonymized so institutions could share information more freely, and to prevent AI bot operators from undermining their countermeasures.”
• How much energy does AI use? The people who know aren’t saying. “A growing body of research attempts to put a number on energy use and AI—even as the companies behind the most popular models keep their carbon emissions a secret.”
• AI could soon offset its own environmental impact by improving energy efficiency. See the article above, and this one is by pwc, Microsoft, and Oxford University, and I haven’t read it yet, so I’d tend to put a big ? around it for now. “Concerns around the environmental cost of building and running artificial intelligence (AI) are growing. A new study takes the conversation in a new direction, asking whether the tech will eventually save as much energy as it consumes.”

Built, Biosphere & Breakthroughs

• Puerto Rico’s solar microgrids beat blackout. “… develop a way to connect multiple microgrids to exchange power with one another, all without having to be hooked up to Puerto Rico’s grid. The strategy, called grid orchestration, ensures that if power is knocked out on one of the installations, the others aren’t compromised. It’s what kept multiple areas in Adjuntas electrified during April’s island-wide blackout.”
• Building a sustainable forest ecosystem in the upper reaches of the Yangtze river. “China is home to some of the world’s important forest ecosystems and global biodiversity hotspots. However, the predominance of monoculture forests has left them highly susceptible to diseases and pests, while rapid economic development has made ecological conditions fragile. As a result, these rich natural resources face biodiversity degradation, soil erosion, and flash floods.”
• Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence. Spoiler: not good! “The indicators show that human activities are increasing the Earth's energy imbalance and driving faster sea-level rise compared to the AR6 assessment. For the 2015–2024 decade average, observed warming relative to 1850–1900 was 1.24 [1.11 to 1.35] °C, of which 1.22 [1.0 to 1.5] °C was human-induced. The 2024-observed best estimate of global surface temperature (1.52 °C) is well above the best estimate of human-caused warming (1.36 °C).”

Asides

• Why people are turning to bibliotherapy. “While the benefits of self-help literature are well documented, advocates of fiction-based or "creative bibliotherapy" claim similar advantages. They argue that immersing oneself in rich, simulated worlds – often reflective of real-life experiences – can help readers process emotions, discover coping strategies, or simply provide momentary escape from their everyday woes. ”
• ZURIGA. “But its most radical decision isn’t about engineering—it’s about culture. In an industry dominated by offshored manufacturing and scale-at-all-costs logic, ZURIGA chose to stay honest, local, and precise. A team of 35 people works collaboratively to build each machine by hand, with the kind of care and clarity that’s rare in consumer electronics—or anywhere, really.”
• We’ve had a Denisovan skull since the 1930s—only nobody knew. “A 146,000-year-old skull from Harbin, China, belongs to a Denisovan, according to a recent study of proteins preserved inside the ancient bone. The paleoanthropologists who studied the Harbin skull in 2021 declared it a new (to us) species, Homo longi. But the Harbin skull still contains enough of its original proteins to tell a different story: A few of them matched specific proteins from Denisovan bones and teeth, as encoded in Denisovan DNA.”