Lessons from
Ants at Work
Three decades of Deborah Gordon's research on harvester ant colonies, translated into principles for building emergent AI systems.
The Book
Each chapter distills key insights from Gordon's research and shows how we implement them in our digital colony.
The Myth of the Queen
Shattering the illusion of central control
Task Allocation
How ants decide what to do—without being told
Interaction Networks
The brief touch that coordinates millions
Foraging Regulation
Collective decisions through encounter rates
Colony Personality
How age changes behavior, and why colonies differ
Stigmergy
The environment as memory
Application to AI
Translating biological wisdom to digital systems
Neighbor Colonies
How boundaries emerge without borders
Colony Life Stages
From precarious founding to senescent wisdom
Ecology & Environment
The colony becomes the environment
Evolution of Strategies
From genetic inheritance to cultural evolution
When Colonies Fail
Failure modes and lessons for robust AI
Active Research
Whitepapers
About Deborah Gordon
Deborah M. Gordon is a professor at Stanford University who has studied harvester ant colonies in the Arizona desert since 1985. Her long-term studies—following the same colonies for over 25 years—revealed patterns invisible to short-term observation.
She demonstrated that ant colonies are not analogies for human organizations—they are genuinely different systems that challenge our assumptions about how intelligence can be organized.
"Ants have been evolving for more than 100 million years. They've had a long time to perfect their systems. We're just beginning to understand."
Key Publications
Ants at Work: How an Insect Society is Organized
Gordon, D.M. (1999). Free Press.
Ant Encounters: Interaction Networks and Colony Behavior
Gordon, D.M. (2010). Princeton University Press.
The Ecology of Collective Behavior
Gordon, D.M. (2014). PLOS Biology.
Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems
Bonabeau, E., Dorigo, M., Theraulaz, G. (1999). Oxford University Press.