#ALIFE2026 proceedings volume is now available for free download!! 2026.alife.org/

🫱 Introducing 𝐍𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫s: 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐟 𝐀𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐭𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟? Beyond today's conventional computers, agents, and world models, Neural Computers (NCs) are new frontiers where computation, memory, and I/O move into a learned runtime state. We ask: whether parts of runtime can move inward into the learning system itself. This is our first step toward the Completely Neural Computer (CNC): a general-purpose neural computer with stable execution, explicit reprogramming, and durable capability reuse. Work done with Mingchen Zhuge (@MingchenZhuge), Changsheng Zhao, Haozhe Liu (@HaoZhe65347 ), Zijian Zhou (@ZijianZhou524 ), Shuming Liu (@shuming96 ), Wenyi Wang (@Wenyi_AI_Wang ), Ernie Chang (@erniecyc ), Gael Le Lan, Junjie Fei, Wenxuan Zhang, Zhipeng Cai (@cai_zhipeng ), Zechun Liu (@zechunliu ), Yunyang Xiong (@YoungXiong1 ), Yining Yang, Yuandong Tian (@tydsh ), Yangyang Shi, Vikas Chandra (@vikasc), Juergen Schmidhuber (@SchmidhuberAI)

If AI will soon match any human cognitive skill, then enhancing your “AI skills” (or whatever similar meme) will not be a moat because using AI is itself a cognitive skill. So where’s your edge? The only thing you really have over AGI is your novelty: AGI can never be you. You have 100 trillion connections in your brain. That’s a lot. No AI will ever precisely replicate those parameters. The training data isn’t there for AI to vacuum up because you are the only entity ever to live your life, and the only one who ever will. The question is whether the sum and total of all that experience yields a novel perspective, where the value is in its uniqueness. Even today those who make a living off their perceived novelty tend to be the most successful. We anticipate a novel (yet often internally consistent) take from a public figure or leader or artist or intellectual we like or respect. Uniqueness and novelty will retain their edge in a post-AGI world because there are virtually infinite possible 100-trillion parameter minds, and even the largest model theoretically conceivable can never capture that whole distribution. At the same time, the once-sterling premium of those skills that no longer make us unique is sinking. Expertise that once distinguished people, like how to code, is losing its edge. But the tricky part is that new skills, like “using AI effectively” are equally vulnerable. All of it just takes intelligence, and that’s the thing that’s being automated. Seeking some new “safe” skillset is a looming adventure in frustrating futility. But what’s still left is your unique perspective. Novelty. No one and nothing can see the world through your eyes. But you have to nurture that uniqueness. Post-AGI, being like everyone else would be the real danger.

We've uploaded a fruit fly. We took the @FlyWireNews connectome of the fruit fly brain, applied a simple neuron model (@Philip_Shiu Nature 2024) and used it to control a MuJoCo physics-simulated body, closing the loop from neural activation to action. A few things I want to say about what this means and where we're going at @eonsys. 🧵

Alyssa and Olaf officially open the main #ALIFE2025 conference!! @ALifeConf