Can AI want something? URochester awarded Templeton Foundation grant to find out

The article discusses the launch of a new institute, the Virtual Institute for the Physics of Agentic Intelligence (VIPAI), funded by a $4.2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
The institute aims to investigate the fundamental differences between living organisms and machines, specifically, how living beings can be seen as autonomous agents, while machines operate based on programming.
Led by the University of Rochester, VIPAI will be an international collaboration involving physicists, biologists, philosophers, and computer scientists from several prestigious institutions.
The research will focus on three main areas: developing a philosophical foundation for agency and meaning, creating mathematical models of autonomous systems, and understanding the nature of semantic information used by living organisms.
The ultimate goal is to compare artificial and biological forms of agency to find general principles underlying intelligent behavior and to understand the conditions under which machines might develop agency-like traits.
The institute’s work is expected to provide a scientific foundation for the next generation of intelligent systems and address the deeper questions about what it means to be intelligent and autonomous.

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