Innovations In Biological Intelligence & Machine Agency - The Divinity School
Given the unprecedented capabilities emerging at the intersection of biological intelligence and machine agency, how do we shape society in ways that are powerful, meaningful, and genuinely beneficial?
This requires metatheoretical perspectives that can work with the tools reshaping society—AI, biotechnology, institutional automation—while operating from fundamentally different assumptions about what these tools should serve.
See the event's official webpage for speakers and agenda! < click here
Currently
We are living through a rare civilizational threshold. The postwar institutional order—the frameworks that have shaped society for eighty years—is undergoing fundamental transformation. When existing structures become malleable as they are now, a question should be asked:
What world is being built next?
The institutions making strategic decisions today about research priorities, capital allocation, AI development, and scientific infrastructure are shaping what society becomes five, ten, twenty years from now.
Yet, the dominant projects heading into the era of machine agency—the race to AGI, positioning for national dominance in a new international order, technoacceleration—are not generative but fundamentally reactive against perceived dangers and the fear of losing control. Even well-intentioned efforts have been defined by opposition rather than vision.
We’re amplifying scholarship that affirms generative programs prioritizing consciousness, life, novelty, and power over longer time horizons, built on metaphysical foundations that take seriously the depth and widespread distribution of choice in the universe, and comfort with genuine uncertainty. For example, visionary initiatives working toward space exploration, smarter democracies, animal communication, new bio and hybrid organisms, longevity and regenerative medicine, and scientific ML that grounds AI's scientific discoveries in human-understandable proofs all have the potential to put humans, machine automation, and ecologies in right relationship.
We're creating the conditions for generative leadership.
The Divinity School's Two Tracks
Horizons of Biological Intelligence (HBI) examines intelligence as it actually exists in living systems—not just in brains, but in cells, tissues, organisms, ecosystems, and cultures, so we don't accidentally come to think we've automated intelligence when we're really only mimicking its most superficial characteristics.
Naturalizing Machine Agency (NMA) investigates how artificial minds and socio-technical systems can be designed and governed so that machine agency supports rather than undermines biological and cultural intelligence.
Together, these provide what reactive frameworks cannot: a positive vision of how society-shaping forces can be powerful, scientifically rigorous, and oriented toward genuine flourishing.
The Divinity School offers a globally accredited MA degree training leaders of scientific institutions including government agencies, private philanthropies, and research and advocacy organizations.
A Generative Process
The forces capable of shaping society toward beneficial outcomes are systematically underfunded compared to reactive and ameliorative approaches. Not because they're less powerful—but because they require longer time horizons, deeper theoretical foundations, and comfort with genuine uncertainty.
This is the opportunity: What gets invested in today determines what becomes possible years from now. At civilizational thresholds, the highest-leverage investments are in frameworks capable of working years ahead—in foundations that reshape what questions get asked, what possibilities get explored, what institutions get built toward a future with more curiosity, novelty, and life.
The Anthology
The Horizons of Biological Intelligence and Naturalizing Machine Agency anthology establishes HBI and NMA as coherent academic fields with rigorous theoretical foundations, clear research agendas, and demonstrated relevance to practical challenges.
We are building fields that allow major institutions to make informed strategic decisions about biological intelligence and machine agency.
It's creating frameworks that shape who gets to build the world we live in.
The Conference
This one-day conference in Cambridge gives you early access to scholarship that will define two emerging fields before they reach mainstream institutions.
What you'll experience:
Direct engagement with materials from leading researchers contributing to the Anthology across biology, AI, consciousness studies, and institutional design
Frameworks being developed years ahead of current practice while they're still being shaped
Questions that are reshaping what's possible in their fields, presented by the scholars asking them
What you'll gain:
Deep understanding of metatheoretical perspectives that few institutions can access yet
Professional relationships with scholars whose work will influence research priorities, funding decisions, and institutional design for decades
Insight into the philosophical distinctions, research programs, and practical implications being established right now
Join Us in Cambridge
May 12th is your opportunity to engage with foundational scholarship before it becomes canonical—to participate in field-building conversations before the world understands it.
Speak
If you would like to give a presentation or participate in a conversation fill out the speaker application form.