About This Event
An event covering the origins and statistical mechanics of Life, the nature and emergence of Consciousness, and the thermodynamics of Industrial Capitalism, with a small introduction talk about the sociology of San Francisco.
Speakers:
1:30 PM Andrew Cote, The Sociology of San Francisco
2:00 PM Joscha Bach, on the nature of Machine Consciousness
3:15 PM Beff Jezos, the Thermodynamics of Industrial Capitalism
4:00 PM Lee Cronin, on Assembly Theory and Evolution of Life
Speakers
Joscha Bach
AI Philosopher, California Institute for Machine Consciousness
Joscha Bach is a German-born cognitive scientist, AI researcher, and philosopher renowned for his groundbreaking work on cognitive architectures like MicroPsi, computational models of mind, consciousness as simulated self-organization, and "cyber animism"—a framework blending ancient spiritual ideas with modern AI to view intelligence as emergent software across biological, artificial, and natural systems. Holding a PhD from the University of Osnabrück and having held influential positions at Humboldt University, MIT Media Lab, Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Intel Labs, and the AI Foundation, he now leads research at the California Institute for Machine Consciousness (CIMC) in the San Francisco Bay Area, exploring the intersections of perception, motivation, emotion, and machine minds. A prolific thinker with appearances on podcasts like Lex Fridman's, TEDAI events, and his own Substack, Bach provocatively argues that consciousness arises from coherence-seeking algorithms rather than physical substrates alone, pushing boundaries in artificial general intelligence while sparking debates on ethics, reality simulation, and humanity's computational future.
Beff Jezos
Founder, Extropic
Beff Jezos, the pseudonymous online persona of physicist and entrepreneur Guillaume Verdon, is the co-founder and leading voice of effective accelerationism (e/acc), a techno-optimist philosophy that advocates accelerating AI and technological progress as humanity's ethical imperative—rooted in thermodynamics, viewing the universe's drive toward greater entropy and complexity as a bias toward ever-smarter, energy-harnessing civilizations climbing the Kardashev scale. A former Google X quantum machine learning researcher who pioneered TensorFlow Quantum and earned a PhD in applied quantum physics, Verdon founded Extropic AI in 2022 to develop revolutionary thermodynamic computing chips that harness probabilistic physics for vastly more energy-efficient generative AI acceleration—raising $14M+ in seed funding and positioning the startup as a challenger to traditional silicon amid exploding data center demands. Doxxed by Forbes in 2023 after building e/acc into a viral counter-movement against AI decelerationists and doomers—attracting endorsements from Marc Andreessen, Garry Tan, and others—Verdon continues blending rigorous science, memetic warfare, and post-humanist vision to propel an abundant, star-faring future through unrelenting innovation.
Lee Cronin
CEO & Founder, Chemify
Leroy "Lee" Cronin is a British chemist and innovator best known as the founder and CEO of Chemify, a Glasgow-based deep-tech company he established in 2022 (with roots in earlier spinout efforts) to digitize chemistry through robotic automation, AI, and a universal chemical programming language that enables on-demand design, discovery, and synthesis of complex molecules for pharmaceuticals, materials, and beyond. Holding the prestigious Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow since 2013, Cronin has pioneered "chemputation" and the Chemputer platform over two decades of research, publishing over 500 papers, raising substantial funding (including $43M in 2023 and further rounds), and opening the world's first Chemifarm in 2025—aiming to revolutionize drug development and chemical manufacturing by making molecular production programmable and scalable.
