Santa Fe Institute's Eric Smith: why we shouldn't assume AGI is 'alive'
danfaggella · x · 2026-10-24
The author spotlights his interview with Eric Smith of the Santa Fe Institute, a leading thinker on the origins of life, in the "Stewarding the Flame" series.
Key ideas from the episode:
- Individuals and species are "architectural motifs" of a larger underlying generative process we call life.
- Expecting the future of life to resemble today's regime (biological or not) is, in Smith's view, ridiculous.
- We should not automatically assume AGI is "alive" or capable of continuing the biosphere's self-transcending process. He isn't anti-AI, but argues it is very unwise to "let it rip" and presume complexity and intelligence will fill the cosmos—far more study is needed to know whether AI carries those traits.
Related event: Origin-of-life scholar Eric Smith on whether AI is truly alive(2 posts)→
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