Biology Seminar - Blaise Agüera y Arcas

"Are Biology and Computer Science the Same Discipline?"

Computer science and biology are generally regarded as very different academic fields; although they increasingly intersect, it is typically only due to the increasing use of computational methods to study biological systems, e.g. bioinformatics. This talk will offer a different perspective: that computer science really is a natural science, not just a method or engineering discipline; and that biology is the evolutionary emergence of general computation in nature. We can thus consider engineered computers to be "artificial computation," in the same spirit as machine learning is "artificial intelligence." This view of biology as natural computation, or conversely of computer science as "artificial life," has a long history, dating back at least to Turing and von Neumann—not coincidentally, founding figures of computer science, theoretical biology, and AI. Updating their seminal insights with recent conceptual breakthroughs in AI and evolutionary theory, we will explore some implications, including: the links between complex systems theory, thermodynamics, and computation; the reason life becomes more complex over time; and the development of artificial computation and artificial intelligence as a part of the same long-running evolutionary process that gave us multicellularity, brains, and societies.

This talk will include material from his recent books, "What is Life? Evolution as Computation" (March 2025) and "What is Intelligence? Lessons from AI about Evolution, Computing, and Minds" (September 2025).

Blaise will be hosting a special fireside chat for students – ask him anything! – the evening before the seminar. Space is limited; email [email protected] to secure your spot.

Faculty Host: Erik Winfree