Some computers are easy to spot. Artificial, human-built computers like those found in smartphones and laptops are abstract dynamic systems with observable computational elements like input, output, energy cost, and logical processes. Other computers aren’t so readily recognized.

Scientists have argued that many natural dynamic systems—from cells to brains to turbulence in fluids—carry out computations, too. However, it’s not always been clear what these dynamic systems are computing, or how they might be harnessed to solve tasks, says SFI Professor David Wolpert.