What researchers are saying
Ganguli recommends Anderson’s ‘More Is Different’ for thinking about AI systems
Surya Ganguli, physicist and AI researcher at Stanford
Ganguli pointed to P. W. Anderson’s essay as a guide to studying complex AI systems as a discipline in their own right.
In the Daily Brief of 13 October 2026
Surya Ganguli highlighted the essay ‘More Is Different’ by the physicist P. W. Anderson as useful for thinking about complex AI systems. He drew on a panel at the COLM conference.
His point was that studying complex physical systems is a distinct discipline: that a system reduces to simple laws does not mean its behaviour can be reconstructed from them. He suggested the same philosophy applies to large AI systems.