It has come as a shock to some AI researchers that a large neural net that predicts next words seems to produce a system with general intelligence. Yet this is consistent with a long-held view among some neuroscientists that the brain evolved precisely to predict the future—the “predictive brain” hypothesis. In What Is Intelligence?, Blaise Agüera y Arcas takes up this idea—that prediction is fundamental not only to intelligence and the brain but to life itself—and explores the wide-ranging implications.

Accept All Cookies by Benjamin Bratton is a collection of key concepts in the philosophy of planetary computation, evolution, and intelligence. This book features pointed provocations on synthetic intelligence, artificial computation, recursive simulations, the geopolitics of stack systems, and the paradoxical relationships between planetary intelligence and transformation. The 100+ concise catalysts for deliberation are drawn from the ideas and research that has emerged from Antikythera’s programs.

What has planetary-scale computation done to our geopolitical realities? It takes different forms at different scales—from energy and mineral sourcing and subterranean cloud infrastructure to urban software and massive universal addressing systems; from interfaces drawn by the augmentation of the hand and eye to users identified by self-quantification and the arrival of legions of sensors, algorithms, and robots. Together, how do these distort and deform modern political geographies and produce new territories in their own image? In an account that is both theoretical and technical, drawing on political philosophy, design theory, and computer science, Bratton explores six layers of The Stack: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User. (10th anniversary edition with a new preface by the author)

The Noocene features selections from Antikythera’s archive presented as a generative cinematic matrix overlaid with key concepts from the school of thought.