Decentralized Computing
There is no inherent way to perform computation built directly into the protocol - however, this does not mean that developers cannot create smart contracts which are stored on Arweave.
AO is a decentralized compute network built on top of Arweave. By using Arweave as a state layer to store smart contract state and user interactions, it's possible to build sophisticated decentralized applications.
Explaining how AO works and how to build applications with it is not in the scoe of this cookbook, however there are plenty of resources to get started if you wish to learn more.