This. I love everything about this. Everything. Thank you. This is the kind of sh!t that made me get into programming in the first place.

I wish more people had more b@lls to do and write things like this. Hell, I wish I did.

Regarding specific reading, three books I think you would love are [1] the self assembling brain, [2] the archaelogy of the mind, and [3] evolutionary optimization algorithms.

People can talk whatever sh!t they want but this pushed us closer to actual AGI than anything this (useful but) deadend LLM craze is pushing us towards.

The most basic function of learning and intelligence is habituation to stimuli, which even an ameoba can handle but not a single LLM does.

Thanks again for this.

Wow, it is really interesting the difference in comments between ALife and AI stories on HN.

For some of you out there, there's a great book that really hasn't gotten enough attention called "The Self-Assembling Brain" [1] that explores intelligence (artificial or otherwise) from the perspectives of AI, ALife, robotics, genetics, and neuroscience.

I hadn't realized the divide was a sharp as it is until I saw the difference in comments. i.e. this one[2] about GPT-5 has over 1000 comments of emotional intensity while comments on OP story are significantly less "intense".

The thing is, if you compare the fields, you would quickly realize that which we call AI has very little in common which intelligence. It can't even habituate to stimuli. A little more cross disciplinary study would help is get better AI sooner.

Happy this story made it to the front page.