Olaf Witkowski

Ethical AI & Artificial Life • Director @CrossLabsTokyo | President @alifeofficial | Lecturer UTokyo • Open-Ended Cognition | Moral Machines | Future of Minds

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

What's our path toward safe, trustworthy AI? As we transition to agentic networks embedded in real institutions, just scaling is not enough.

We need trust architecture for ACI: causal structure, transferability, provenance, permissions, and auditability.

https://t.co/SfjyFFSUtI

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

@kanair Honestly, it’s like the human uniqueness arguments for language and life all over again. Also, did everybody forget about the good regulator theorem?

[Gill Verdon @GillVerd]

If you're running artificial intelligence software, pivot to artificial life.

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

@davidad Panpsychism is when consciousness has had it, so it solves the hard problem for you.

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

@dioscuri Congrats! Sounds like an exciting next step!

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

@kanair So fun! I had no idea you worked on that—let’s exhibit some of it at ALIFE?

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

Aligned with our recent efforts to create autopoietically stable computation on top of unreliable –yet powerful – substrates ✅

Bravo Mingchen Zhuge et al. 👏

[Mingchen Zhuge @MingchenZhuge]

🫱 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)

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

I’m glad to announce the new ISAL Global Membership Program Pilot!

A special discounted membership rate to the International Society of Artificial Life is now on offer for scholars from low-income countries.

Learn more about the program:
https://t.co/jGr6zJ71GN

#alife

[Yusuke Hayashi 林祐輔 @hayashiyus]

私たちのチーム（@tanichu, 廣瀬百葉, @miz_oka,　@kensuzuki, @okw, @audreyt）による初のプレプリント『Symbiotic Alignment via Collective Predictive Coding』が公開されました！ ウェブサイト（メンバーページやブログも含む）もオープンしています。ぜひXでALIをフォローして、投稿をシェアしていただけると嬉しいです！

Paper link: https://t.co/QUw5guAomA
X post: https://t.co/PrIAWn61AU
Blog post on ALI’s website: https://t.co/fy1PU84FbD

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

@ALifeConf special session “Artificial Life as Experimental Philosophy” is now accepting proposals. Submit yours by March 30.
https://t.co/c2iL2c2LMd

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

@gabinrack @ylecun @amilabs @lxbrun @laurentsolly @sainingxie @pascalefung @michaelrabbat A great design, fitting for the endeavor.

[takashi ikegami @alltbl]

My last lecture in Komaba:
https://t.co/0S8kPkGjCI
The talk will be streamed live on this YouTube channel.

@HirokiSayama

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

I had a great time at last year’s AI+Compassion Global Relay, where I presented "The State of AI: Why Compassion Can't Wait”. It was a meaningful gathering that’s essential in these times.
https://t.co/jweZFAPnOU
#AI #artificialintelligence #ALife #ArtificialLife #compassion

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

We have been dreaming about this moment. If it wasn’t for a decisive difference.

Read more on my latest blog: "A Secure Operating System for Collective Intelligence"

https://t.co/SfjyFFSUtI

#collectiveintelligence #ai #llms #ai #artificialintelligence

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

Novelty as a moat over AI skills

[Kenneth Stanley @kenneth0stanley]

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.

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

@hardmaru Sometimes I think the future was yesterday

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

Steps towards hybrid life @ALifeConf

[Michael Andregg @michaelandregg]

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. 🧵

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

I’ll be joining a live discussion at @SocietiesWorld later today on "The Companionship Paradigm: Architecting Safe AI Societies in the Age of Impossible Alignment"

Wednesday February 25, 3:30-5pm JST

Free to join:
https://t.co/PcbDM3d3K1

Hope to see you there.

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

Proud to be a part of the @crosslabstokyo team, who worked tirelessly for months to bring to life this year’s @ALifeConf ALife Conference 2025.

Thank you, team! 🫰

#Alife2025 #Artificiallife #ALife #CrossLabs

[Olaf Witkowski @okw]

The Artificial Life Institute Kyoto Office Opening event on October 5th was a lot of fun! Thank you to our team at the ALife Institute, our partners, sponsors and collaborators for making it a huge success.