Fetzer Franklin Fund has partnered with FQXi to stimulate research on the role of intelligence in the physical world. Research will be funded across a host of institutions around the globe, spanning the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, philosophy, neuroscience and information theory. At FQXi we try to promote rigorous research into new and underdeveloped areas that have the potential to fundamentally change the way in which we understand the world. Following on our previous program on "Agency in the Physical World," the idea of intelligence, and how it relates to the world as described by physics, is an area we believe is ripe for investigation. In this round through a competitive peer review process we have selected nine proposals to receive large grants, totaling just under $1.5 million.
The exciting topics that will be investigated include:
1.) How an embryonic brain develops to produce complex behavior in organisms without the need to teach through examples.
2.) How do intelligent agents efficiently execute tasks in a quantum world?
3.) What can an agent with only access to probabilities conclude?
4.) Can agents with conflicting models of reality have equally useful information?
5.) Are physical laws the constructs of intelligent agents, and how do they encode information about the world?
6.) Does the universe "compute"? How is this rendered in biological systems?
7.) Do more complex systems process information at a higher level? Can this be used to define a collectivist notion of intelligence?
8.) Is intelligence limited by physical constraints such as the finiteness of resources available in the physical world and the laws of thermodynamics?
9.) What level of intelligence is needed to make predictions? How much memory is needed for this?
We would like to congratulate all our successful applicants and thank everyone who applied. We are particularly grateful to those who provided extended applications in the second round, and recognize the level of effort this entails. We're looking forward to see the outcomes!