Summer camp 2025 is here and we, J&J, are excited to teach our new PSRT course:
Artificial and Biological Intelligence
Biological intelligence is everywhere we look. However, What is it that we are looking at? A
natural source of inspiration is our own mind as well as our collective ones. These minds, and
our hands, co-working with machines, build everything that it is around us. What can the
evolution of hominids tell us about what we call intelligence today? What can microbes,
neurons, and other cells tell us about intelligence? How does it relate to life? Can we truly define
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)? Agentic AI is fuelling hopes for a new era of agentic
research1 and entrepreneurship2. But, what are agents? When inventing his network3 Was Hopfield inspired in the biology of neurons or the physics of the Ising model? If computers have
‘neurons’, Can also bacteria have them? How does AI, generative AI and Agentic AI relate to
biology? In nature, intelligent creatures abound. Under our own feet, on top of our skin, on
every surface of the built environment we can find biological intelligence operating at the
microscopic scale: microbiomes are a key component of our supporting ecosystems. Microbes
are intelligent and social. These creatures exhibit collective swarm intelligence as groups of
bacteria construct their colonies while exploring food landscapes. Can an evolving AI machine
learn intelligence from microbes? Can the machine do its own science? What would it want to
know? What would it want to make?
In this course, we aim to reflect on intelligence in machines and living systems.
Students are expected to design their own project exploring machine and biological intelligence.
To motivate development we will have a few lectures, a journal club, and hands-on experience
playing with machine vision and bacterial colonies that we can grow from samples we can find
around us. Together with ‘some AI’ help, we will try to hunt for ‘intelligence’; whatever that is!
