Societal Outreach Initiatives for Artificial Life Workshop at ALIFE2025 (Kyoto, Japan)

Updated 29 August

Along with Emily Dolson, I will be hosting the “Societal Outreach Initiatives for Artificial Life” workshop at ALIFE2025, where we try to improve the outreach efforts for Artificial Life.

Does ALIFE have a “marketing problem”?

Despite significant scientific advancements in Artificial Life over the past four decades, its impact and understanding remains largely confined to academic circles. While initiatives like the ALIFE newsletter, encyclopaedia, various podcasts, and other web resources are attempting to address this, we believe more direct public engagement is crucial. Having outreach channels that can directly communicate artificial life to the public offers an excellent way to promote artificial life as a field, as well as improve public scientific literacy. Improving public knowledge in this way also provides a potential buffer against disinformation or mischaracterisation of artificial life research in the future.

This interactive workshop aims to bring together conference attendees interested in extending the reach of artificial life to the wider public. We will begin with short invited talks showcasing current outreach efforts and then break out into roundtable discussions to brainstorm how we can improve current initiatives and generate new ways to improve the societal outreach of artificial life.

This workshop aims to serve as a springboard for 1-3 new societal outreach initiatives, which attendees will be encouraged to champion and further develop.

Attendees are encouraged to register their interest and prepare potential ideas and discussion points in advance, although space will be provided for new ideas on the day. You can register and submit ideas in advance by clicking this link.

Timings of the 90-minute workshop will be confirmed as soon as we know them.

Current schedule:

• Overview: ALife Newsletter (Claus Aranha) - 15 minutes
• Overview: ALife Encyclopaedia (Emily Dolson) - 15 minutes
• Overview: Complexity Cat (Amahury J.L. Diaz) - 15 minutes
• Brainstorm/break-out session - 45 minutes