Piper Welch

.@KamBielawski just showed @ALifeConf that evolving things with "insides" which can evolutionarily change, neutrally, creates plateaus along which evolution can walk to escape from local optima. bit.ly/4cQcLqe Photo credit: @HirokiSayama. #ALIFE2024

Hot off the presses at Chaos - "Evolving higher-order synergies reveals a trade-off between stability and information-integration capacity in complex systems" w/ @DoctorJosh 1/n pubs.aip.org/aip/cha/articl…

Looking to hire a postdoc to do AI-designed biology with @drmichaellevin and myself. Please RT; DM if interested. Here's what happened the last time we teamed up: youtube.com/watch?v=8WyWFA…

Really excited about this paper, featuring brand new PhD @GizemGumuskaya 🎉, collaborator @sjmgarnier, & undergrad students P. Srivastava, B. Cooper, H. Lesser, B. Semegran: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad… What I personally think it means: thoughtforms.life/meet-the-anthr…

#xenobots were made from frog cells (Xenopus laevis). Now introducing "anthrobots". Guess what they're made from. nature.com/articles/d4158…

AI can now generate images, whole movies, proteins, xenobots... ...how about mathematical descriptions of the world? Lab member Amanda Bertschinger presented on why "neural symbolic regression" is so difficult at @ECMLPKDD yesterday. Well done Amanda! youtu.be/0sLt5hW0-j0

@NewYorker article out today about the great work of my colleague Mark Blumberg. Featuring cameo appearances from myself and our "dreaming" robot, the Evil Starfish (past work w/ Victor Zykov and @hodlipson). newyorker.com/science/elemen… or jbongard.github.io/docs/WhatAreDr…

Susan Stepney: "Is ChatGPT conscious?" Anil Seth: "No." Ted Chiang: "No." (Applause) #ALIFE2023 @ALifeConf

@PigozziFederico branching into philosophy at #ALIFE 💻

@DoctorJosh @PiperRWelch @csgrasso10 @GizemGumuskaya @drmichaellevin It was a great talk!

@CejkovaJitka @DoctorJosh @csgrasso10 @GizemGumuskaya @drmichaellevin Thank you! Look forward to your workshop!

#xenobots are AI-designed organisms. But what if next-gen biobots can't be designed by AI? Introducing ADS's: AI-designed swarms! @PiperRWelch will be presenting this, her new work, at #ALife2023 on Tuesday. Joint work w/ @csgrasso10, @GizemGumuskaya and @DrMichaelLevin.

@PiperRWelch -- new lab member, @NSF GRFP recipient, and #xenobot team member -- was just profiled by our university. She'll be presenting her work at the #ALIFE2023 conference in Japan this week. If you're there, check it out! uvm.edu/news/ovpr/rede…

Think you know what intelligence is? Computation? AI? Embodied cognition? Think again. Take this red pill, and let @ParsaAtoosa , presenting Tuesday at @GECCOConf, show you how deep the rabbit hole of embodiment really goes...

AI must understand the world to act safely within it. To that end, @PigozziFederico will describe a robot at #GECCO2023 this week that uses its body to learn about the world in a new way: Each body part "votes" about what is/isn't possible, at all times. youtu.be/IGYQAzYiJvE

How can #robot swarms work together safely? @csgrasso10 has found that they need to push against their neighbors in diverse ways, and get pushed back by them in reliable ways, *quickly*. Come see her describe this at @GeccoConf today. And vote for this, a best paper contender!

With the publication of several of the Xenobot papers, a lot of ideas were brought up that were too hard to properly discuss in short format. @DougBlackiston, @Kriegmerica, @DoctorJosh, and I put our thoughts on the most interesting open issues here: liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.10…

Open World Chat! Geek science episode 2! @PiperRWelch and @kamtb28 talk cutting-edge AI and biobots with @jim_dandeneau while I kind of drool glazy-eyed and scratch my ass because science is hard. #AI #biobots #Apocalypse openworldchat.com/episodes/scien…

Embodied AI, and @uvmvermont, on the front page of the @nytimes today. nytimes.com/2023/04/11/sci…

@Kriegmerica @DoctorJosh @uvmvermont Thank you (uncle? cousin?) Sam!

@DoctorJosh @uvmvermont @PiperRWelch Congrats Piper!

My @uvmvermont doctoral advisee @PiperRWelch was just awarded an NSF GRFP. nsfgrfp.org Current lab vibes: