Artificial Intelligence + Origin of Life Prize

Deadline: 2026-11-17
Award: $5,000,000
Open to: Everyone legally allowed to participate*

Every cell reproduces itself from digital instructions, stored in DNA. DNA has the same features as modern digital devices: Layers of digital encoding, decoding and data storage; error detection, error correction and repair. Plus an ability to adapt that beggars the imagination.

How do living things repair and heal themselves, adapt to any situation you can imagine, and make choices? The genetic engineering capabilities of cells, which are discussed in the book Evolution 2.0, are not known to most people. But an answer suggests staggering implications for medicine, technology and the environment.

Cells re-engineer themselves, in real time, in hours... even minutes. The reason you have to finish your antibiotics is, germs can hyper-mutate at terrifying speed - then kill you with a vengeance.

How do cells “know” how to evolve? No human software does that. Give software millions of chances and billions of years and all it will do is crash. But life adapts relentlessly. How does it do this? What do cells know that we don’t?

And what about consciousness? In the human realm, only conscious beings create and modify code. Where does consciousness come from? Are cells self aware?

The Evolution 2.0 Prize focuses these issues down to one central question: