David Krakauer
Santa Fe Institute
Functionalist What matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material
David Krakauer is President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. His research examines the evolutionary history of information processing across genes, neural circuits, cultural institutions, and machine architectures. With Nihat Ay, Jessica Flack, and colleagues, he developed the information-theoretic formalization of individuality, defining an organism or cognitive agent by how much information its internal state transmits forward through time relative to environmental coupling.
Krakauer also introduced the distinction between complementary cognitive artifacts, tools like the abacus or notation systems that leave a stronger residual skill inside the biological user when removed, and competitive cognitive artifacts, systems that replace the internal computation and atrophy the host’s capacity once withdrawn. That distinction forms a core analytical axis of his September 2026 paper with Ricard Solé, Giulio Ruffini, and Michael Levin, “Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus” (arXiv:2609.03344).
His work treats intelligence and agency as collective, multi-scale phenomena governed by phase transitions and information flow. That perspective shifts the evaluation of artificial systems away from isolated benchmark scores toward the coupled dynamics of human-machine collectives.
Known for. Evolution of intelligence and stupidity, complementary versus competitive cognitive artifacts, information theory of individuality, co-author of Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus
Coverage on this site
Related researchers
- Ricard SoléICREA, Universitat Pompeu FabraComplex systems theory of cognition across cells, brains and machines, phase transitions in living systems, cognitive graphs, language origins
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Michael LevinAllen Discovery Center, Tufts UniversityBioelectric signalling, the cognitive light cone, and diverse intelligence
- Giulio RuffiniStarlab Barcelona. NeuroelectricsKolmogorov theory (KT) of consciousness, algorithmic information theory of structured experience, transcranial electrical stimulation and brain network modeling, co-author of Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus
- Hedayat AbedijooACE Conscious Studio / IndependentACE.await (2026), the ACE decision framework (Agency, Connection, Exchange)
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- Igor AleksanderImperial College LondonAxiomatic Consciousness Theory, neural state machines, The World in My Mind, pioneering neural network engineering
David Krakauer is listed with the other functionalists and computationalists, who hold that what matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.