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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · 2d

great opening keynote by Hector Zenil at @alife2025.bsky.social 🇯🇵

the purpose of science (and ALife) is to make sense of patterns in the world

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · 3d

Ready for @alife2025.bsky.social 🇯🇵

Østfold University College is well represented with F. Reimers, C. Vibe, E. Guichard, and me.

Check out our 3 presentations at the Distributed Ciphers special session (EngramNCA, ARC-NCA & critical NCA) on Tue & poster session (RBNs for reservoir computing)!

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · 8d

I finally had the time to revise my website with updated descriptions of my research goals and lab activity: www.nichele.eu

Feedback is welcome 😄

PS. Is it clear enough that I *DO NOT* focus on artificial intelligence applications? 🧠

Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · 8d

Detailed program of the Special Session "The Distributed Ciphers" @alife2025.bsky.social

Special session program also available here:
www.nichele.eu/ALIFE-Distri...

The entire program of ALIFE 2025 is available on the conference website: 2025.alife.org/program

See you soon in Kyoto 🇯🇵

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · 24d

see you there!

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · 26d

Nice! Any paper / preprint?

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · 27d

Gross annual salary between NOK 590 000 - 600 000.

Deadline: 12th October 2025

Please share with relevant candidates.

Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · 27d

The project may include working with Neural Cellular Automata, Abstraction and Reasoning, Bio-Inspired and Neuro-Inspired AI, Artificial Evolutionary and Developmental Systems, Alignment, Social Learning and Cultural Evolution, and other Artificial Life techniques.

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · 27d

🔥🔥PhD position alert 🔥🔥

I am looking for a talented PhD student at Østfold University College (Norway) to work on "Open-Ended AI: Novel Methods for Enabling Novelty and Creativity in AI Systems".

Apply here: 👇

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

PhD in Open-Ended AI: Novel Methods for Enabling Novelty and Creativity in AI Systems (286193) | Østfold University College

Job title: PhD in Open-Ended AI: Novel Methods for Enabling Novelty and Creativity in AI Systems (286193), Employer: Østfold University College, Deadline: Sunday, October 12, 2025

www.jobbnorge.no

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · 28d

Nice article on Neural Cellular Automata!

It also talks about our work on ARC-NCA!

Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.bsky.social · 28d

The cells of your body follow simple rules and play off one another to form a complete organism. The researcher Alexander Mordvintsev has developed “neural cellular automata,” building blocks that can self-assemble into any form. @georgemusser.com reports: www.quantamagazine.org/self-assembl...

Self-Assembly Gets Automated in Reverse of ‘Game of Life’ | Quanta Magazine

In cellular automata, simple rules create elaborate structures. Now researchers can start with the structures and reverse-engineer the rules.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · Aug 28

And here are the accepted contributions to the Special Session #TheDistributedCiphers at @alife2025.bsky.social:

Details: www.nichele.eu/ALIFE-Distri...

See you in Kyoto 🇯🇵

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · Aug 27

Presentation of our work on "NCAs for memory transfer + application to ARC-AGI", given at the computational series of the #Levin Lab at Tufts & Harvard Universities.

Thanks M. Levin for the kind invitation & special thanks to Etienne for presenting our work.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyc0...

"A Neural Cellular Automaton Model of Memory Transfer" by Etienne Guichard and Stefano Nichele.

YouTube video by Michael Levin's Academic Content

www.youtube.com

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · Aug 5

A great review on Module Repetition in Neural Networks, very relevant for NCAs

arxiv.org/pdf/2507.12473

arxiv.org

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · Aug 5

Check out our new work on Critical Neural Cellular Automata 👇

sidneypontesfilho.bsky.social @sidneypontesfilho.bsky.social · Aug 5

The critical NCA got perfect score in the 5-bit memory task and can surpass the performance of the best elementary CA, rule 30, in the MNIST classification.

This work was done together with @stenichele.bsky.social and @mikkellepperod.bsky.social

Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · Aug 4

In parallel, cellular automata and synthetic worlds show how memory and constraints can support functional behavior in minimal systems. Together, these findings are reshaping classical notions of agency, belief, and goal-directedness.

Link: www.nichele.eu/ALIFE-Distri...

The Distributed Ciphers - ALife 2025 Special Session

www.nichele.eu

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · Aug 4

Abstract: Our understanding of intelligence is evolving. Research on fungi, plants, single cells, and swarms reveals complex problem-solving without centralized processes.

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · Aug 4

We are happy to announce that @alyssa-m-adams.bsky.social will give a keynote at our Distributed Ciphers Special Session at @alife2025.bsky.social Kyoto (Oct. 6-10) #ALIFE2025

Alyssa's talk:

⭐ What Fungi, Swarms, and Cellular Automata Are Teaching Us About Intelligence ⭐

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Reposted by Stefano Nichele

Tim Taylor @drtimt.bsky.social · Dec 4

I've finally got a copy of Nils Barricelli's 1st paper on Artificial Life, in Italian (1954). Would be great to get it translated into English. My preference would be to have this done by a skilled human translator rather than AI. Any bilingual Italian-English folk out there who might be interested?

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Reposted by Stefano Nichele

Edvard I Moser @edvardmoser.bsky.social · Jun 26

Your brain doesn’t just passively track time ⏳ - it structures it.
In @Science.org we show that activity in 🧠 memory circuits (LEC) drifts constantly, but makes sharp jumps at key moments, segmenting life into meaningful events. (1/2)

👉 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Event structure sculpts neural population dynamics in the lateral entorhinal cortex

Our experience of the world is a continuous stream of events that must be segmented and organized at multiple timescales. The neural mechanisms underlying this process remain unknown. In this work, we...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Stefano Nichele

Erwan Plantec @eplantec.bsky.social · Jun 24

Synthetic ecosystems that autonomously and continuously evolve in silico 👾
An Alifer dream we pursue with Flow-Lenia, a mass-conservative continuous CA !
If you are interested in complex systems with (1) emergent creatures and (2) intrinsic evolutionary dynamics, go check our new paper !
A 🧵

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · Jun 12

Link: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...
Preprint: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

We use encoders-decoders to simulate elementary CA & identify a rich hierarchy of relationships not known before. We show that the number of elementary automata with unique dynamics can be reduced from 88 to 52!

Studying Encoder–Decoder Relation Between Cellular Automata to Uncover Their Computational Structure

Studying relationships between cellular automata can provide important insight into their structure and computational capacity. In this chapter, we study a notion called the encoder-decoder relation b...

link.springer.com

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · Jun 12

Our book chapter "Studying Encoder–Decoder Relation Between Cellular Automata to Uncover Their Computational Structure" is finally published in the book "Advances in Cellular Automata, Volume 2".

This work was led by Bára Hudcová, in collaboration with Tomas Mikolov and myself.

Studying Encoder–Decoder Relation Between Cellular Automata to Uncover Their Computational Structure

Studying relationships between cellular automata can provide important insight into their structure and computational capacity. In this chapter, we study a notion called the encoder-decoder relation b...

link.springer.com

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · Jun 5

the actual ARC-NCA paper etimush.github.io/ARC_NCA/

I linked the related EngramNCA above :)

A collection of developmental solutions to the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC-AGI) produced by various Cellular Automata.

etimush.github.io

Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · Jun 5

Our #MLST podcast episode on ARC-NCA is available on early access on patreon at this link:

www.patreon.com/posts/early-...

We talk about artificial life and neuroAI, and the importance of developmental systems for AI.

Paper: etimush.github.io/EngramNCA/

Thanks Tim for having us!

Early Access: ARC-NCA | Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

www.patreon.com

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Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · May 20

Feel the AGI 🧠

Stefano Nichele @stenichele.bsky.social · May 20

🚀 New preprint!
ARC-NCA shows how Neural Cellular Automata —incl. memory-rich EngramNCA—crack tasks from the ARC-AGI benchmark, hitting GPT-4.5-level accuracy at a fraction of the cost. 🌱🤖
Web: etimush.github.io/ARC_NCA/
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2505.08778
#NeuroAI #AGI #CA #ALIFE