Ant Encounters

In this interview with author Deborah Gordon, Kyle asks questions about the mechanisms at work in an ant colony and what ants might teach us about how to build artificial intelligence. Ants are surprisingly adaptive creatures whose behavior emerges from their complex interactions. Aspects of network theory and the statistical nature of ant behavior are just some of the interesting details you'll get in this episode.

Guest

Deborah Gordon: Deborah M. Gordon is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University. She studies how ant colonies work without central control using networks of simple interactions, and how these networks evolve in relation to changing environments. She received her PhD from Duke University, then joined the Harvard Society of Fellows, and did postdoctoral research at Oxford and the University of London before joining the Stanford faculty in 1991. Projects include a long-term study of a population of harvester ant colonies in Arizona, studies of the invasive Argentine ant in northern California, arboreal ant trail networks and ant-plant mutualisms in Central America.