Ex Machina: Coevolving Machines & the Origins of the Social Universe
Earth is full of examples of social behavior. When individual bacteria, insects, primates, and even self-driving cars make productive choices about their interactions with other individuals, that’s sociality. We can trace social behavior back to the unicellular organisms that became the building blocks for life on our planet. And humans, by becoming social, gained a great advantage in the evolutionary race for survival. If we could rewind Earth’s clock, would social behavior emerge yet again, and could we expect to find it elsewhere in the Universe? “Probably yes,” writes SFI External Professor John H. Miller, author of “Ex Machina: Coevolving Machines & the Origins of the Social Universe.”