What Is This?
This is NOT
- ❌ A coding competition
- ❌ A single-discipline event
- ❌ About building the best AI
This IS
- ✓ A research convergence
- ✓ Cross-disciplinary collaboration
- ✓ About understanding emergence
Biologists, computer scientists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers — together exploring what happens when simple agents create complex intelligence.
The Big Questions
At what threshold does individual behavior become collective intelligence?
If neurons aren't conscious but brains are, are ants not conscious but colonies are?
What problem classes are suited to pheromone-based optimization?
If intelligence emerges from simple rules, can we grow it rather than build it?
Research Tracks
Proofs, complexity analysis, convergence guarantees
Build working missions on the colony
Empirical analysis, pattern discovery
Compare digital to biological ants
Emergence, consciousness, ethics
Cross-Disciplinary
Each team must include members from at least 2 different departments
Computer Science
Biology
Mathematics
Economics
Physics
Philosophy
Cognitive Science
Engineering
Business
Neuroscience
What You Get
Infrastructure
- • TypeDB Cloud access (ants-colony database)
- • Agentverse deployment slots
- • 100 ants per team to spawn
- • GPU compute credits
Data
- • 22,690 distinguished points from Hunt BTC
- • Pheromone trail snapshots
- • Agent traversal history
- • Colony metrics over time
Mentorship
- • ONE Ontology creator
- • STAN algorithm author
- • Faculty advisors (Biology, Philosophy, Economics)
Prizes
- • $5,000 per track winner
- • Publication opportunities
- • Colony co-ownership
- • Paper co-authorship
The Vision
Day 1: Biology student explains pheromones to CS major
Day 1: Economist sketches game theory on whiteboard
Day 1: Philosopher asks "what does the colony believe?"
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Day 2: Teams realize their problems are connected
Day 2: Cross-pollination creates unexpected insights
Day 2: Someone proves something nobody expected
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Day 3: The colony does something nobody programmed
Day 3: Everyone leaves thinking differently
"Cross-pollination. The academic version of stigmergy."