Definition
Plain language
A measure of how short the shortest program that produces a given output would be.
As stated in the literature
The length of the minimal description of a string in some universal programming language, used as a formal notion of informational content; underlies the Algorithmic Lovelace Bound on closed-loop novelty.
Why it matters: It formalizes the intuition of 'genuine information content,' which matters for arguing about what kinds of novelty a closed-loop AI can actually produce.
For example, the string '010101...' repeated a million times has tiny Kolmogorov complexity because a one-line loop produces it, while a million random bits has roughly its own length.
Heard on the show
“… The third — the Algorithmic Lovelace Bound, which leans on Kolmogorov complexity — gives you a quantitative version: a system applied recursively to its own outputs can add …”Episode 073 — When Three LLMs Talk to Each Other, Their Ideas Quietly Stop Moving