Find out more on the new conference website: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/ces2026

Presentation submissions are open until November 16, with four submission formats: standard talks (15-20 minutes), lightning talks (5 minutes), poster presentations, and thematic sessions.

8/8 This contributes to understanding human technological uniqueness *by identifying a mechanism and explaining the dynamics* that enable open-ended cultural evolution, how we escape the optimization traps that constrain other species and achieve truly unbounded technological development.

7/8 This process differs from cumulative optimization because it involves expanding the range of problems that can be solved (evolvability) rather than optimizing solutions to existing problems (adaptation). It's about accessing new problems, not just solving old ones better.

6/8 I propose a model for how cultural evolution of increasingly sophisticated cognitive technologies enables access to previously unreachable invention problems, driving open-ended technological change.

5/8 These inventions include further empowering cognitive technologies, creating a feedback loop. Inventors become increasingly capable of making themselves even more capable inventors. We literally make ourselves smarter at making ourselves smarter.

4/8 By inventing technologies that enhance cognition, we become able to invent technologies that would have been impossible using only our core (non-cultural) cognitive abilities. Writing, math, measuring tools—these expand what our minds can accomplish.

3/8 My argument: human open-ended technological evolution emerges from cultural evolutionary bootstrapping of our inventive capabilities through cognitive technologies. We invent technologies that enhance our cognitive capabilities.

2/8 A puzzle (2): Yet humans are capable of open-ended or evolvable technological change: we generate novel and useful technological solutions for an ever-expanding set of increasingly complex problems. But how are novel problems of increasing complexity accessed?

1/8 🧵 A puzzle (1): While cumulative improvement explains how specific technological traditions get increasingly better at solving pre-existing problems, it's fundamentally an optimization process, one which halts when an optimal solution is found (optimization trap).

Looking forward to it!