We’ve figured out how to "code" inanimate stuff so it spontaneously starts acting like it's alive.
arXiv · March 18, 2026 · 2603.15631
The Takeaway
Traditionally, emergence is seen as a mysterious outcome of complex systems that we can't easily predict or control. This paper introduces a pipeline that uses mathematical goal-setting to force simple parts, like coupled oscillators, to organize themselves into structures with specific, high-level behaviors like memory and integrated information.
From the abstract
The study of complex systems has produced a huge library of different descriptive statistics that scientists can use to describe the various emergent patterns that characterize complex systems. The problem of engineering systems to display those patterns from first principles is a much harder one, however, as a hallmark of complexity is that macro-scale emergent properties are often difficult to predict from micro-scale features. Here, we propose a general optimization-based pipeline to automate