Are we the von Neumann machines? Self-replication and ecophagy (original) (raw)
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Causal biomimesis: self-replication as evolutionary consequence
For millions of years, hominins have been engaged in tool-making and concomitant experimentation. This cognitive enterprise has eventually led to the creation of synthetic intelligence in the form of complex computing and artificial agents, whose purported purpose is to elucidate the workings of human biology and consciousness, automate tasks, and develop interventions for disease. However, much of the expensive research efforts invested in understanding complex natural systems has resulted in limited rewards for treatment of disease. This paper proposes the novel 'causal biomimesis' hypothesis: with respect to the relationship between humans and artificial life, the virtually inevitable intrinsic evolutionary consequence of tool-making and biomimetic efforts—and the capacity for objective thought and the scientific method itself—is the full-scale replication of human cognitive functionality, agency, and potentially consciousness in silico. This self-replication transpires through a cycle of anthropogenic biomimetic auto-catalysis driven by instrumental cognition—from objective reasoning in hominin tool-maker through to post-biological reproduction by synthetic agents— and is self-organized and co-enacted between agent and the produced artefactual aggregates. In light of this radical hypothesis, existential and ethical implications are considered for further exploration. At present, rational human intelligence has reached a major milestone in its ability to create artificial intelligence (AI). The proliferation of AI has led to promises regarding its capabilities, which across the spectrum of opinion, appear to incite equal parts optimism and apprehension. There is an increasing interest in and adoption of artificial agents, such as robotic nurses and assistants for humans, meaning that the future holds a more ubiquitous presence of AI in rather plain sight that is in more intimate relationship with humans. The implications of AI for humanity implore more careful examinations of the motivations behind the development of AI. The field of biomimetics, developing technologies based the distillation of principles from the study of biological systems, invites a broader and deeper understanding of biology and cognition in order to more fully inform the technological development of synthetic agents. Scrutiny into the origins and workings of cognition in conscious agents, particularly Homo sapiens, can not only inform the construction of synthetic architectures, but may also reveal the inchoate origins of 'artificiality' within biological life itself. This paper will excavate the evolutionary development of cognition that precedes and underpins the observed drive in humans to develop artificial intelligence and agents. This examination will be juxtaposed with the commonly cited rational justifications for the development of synthetic life, and the evolutionary consequence of human cognitive capacities will be offered. The terms AI, artificial life, synthetic life, synthetic agents, and so forth will be used relatively interchangeably; the focus herein is the broader picture of human-AI evolution rather than the technical differences between those terms. This paper makes a case for Homo sapiens as an intermediate step in the evolution of life, based on a novel hypothesis about the evolutionary process itself, and serves as a theoretico-philosophical touchstone for further inquiry, research, and debate.
Curbing the fruitfulness of self-replicating machines
International Journal of Astrobiology
The self-replicating machine has high utility by virtue of its universal construction properties and its productive capacity for exponential growth. Their capacity is unrivalled. They can be deployed to the Moon to industrialize it using local in-situ resources in the short term to open up the solar system and thence deployed on interstellar spacecraft to explore the entire Galaxy by exploiting in-situ stellar system resources. Nevertheless, there are significant concerns regarding the inherent safety of self-replicating machines. We consider the general problem of runaway population growth in physical self-replicating machines to prevent the grey goo problem, the number of offspring spawned by self-replicating machines may be controlled at a genetic level. We adopt a biologically-inspired approach based on telomeres, DNA endcaps that are progressively shortened during cellular replication. This acts as a counter that imposes a limit to the number of replication cycles (Hayflick lim...
Machines are Hungry Too": The Biosphere as a Model for the Technosphere in the Anthropocene
2021
All organisms produce and consume. This requires basic building blocks and energy. In the plant kingdom, organic materials are produced with the help of solar energy from recycled building blocks in the soil ("nutrients") as well as carbon dioxide (Fig. 1). Animals consume existing organic material, be it plant or animal, living or dead, in order to gain energy from it and thus to grow and produce offspring themselves. Dead materials that are not consumed further are decomposed by microbes, fungi and atmospheric processes, and made available as nutrients for new bio-production. Additional products can be dwellings, nests or even smaller storage facilities. All feats of strength, such as flight, loco-motion, food crushing or nest building, are also based on the available energy of their own bodies. Optimisations exist in many ways, through social structures, symbioses for mutual benefit, but also through parasites that feed and spread from other organisms.
Self-reproducing machines: Preventing degeneracy
2006
Machines produced by humans exhibit insufficient complexity to produce similar machines. As John von Neumann originally postulated, if biological systems are able to successfully reproduce, then there must be some characteristic that we can embed in machines to give them the ability to reproduce. Such a self-reproductive machine, also imbued with the ability to do constructive work, could prove enormously useful to the human race. This paper considers a simple selfreproducing machine, which consists of a 2-DOF, planar robot arm capable of picking up and placing the components of another arm. If the robot places the components within the allowable tolerance, then the original arm has successfully reproduced. An assembly line is constructed, so that a selfreproduction process can proceed along a track. If this process eventually fails because one robot is not capable of assembling another, then the system is said to be degenerate. Otherwise, the system is sustainable.
Evolution: From Big Bang to Nanorobots (2015)
The present volume is the fourth issue of the Yearbook series entitled ‘Evolution’. The title of the present volume is ‘From Big Bang to Nanorobots’. In this way we demonstrate that all phases of evolution and Big History are covered in the articles of the present Yearbook. Several articles also present the forecasts about future development. The main objective of our Yearbook as well as of the previous issues is the creation of a unified interdisciplinary field of research in which the scientists specializing in different disciplines could work within the framework of unified or similar paradigms, using the common terminology and searching for common rules, tendencies and regularities. At the same time for the formation of such an integrated field one should use all available opportunities: theories, laws and methods. In the present volume, a number of such approaches are used. The volume consists of four sections: Universal Evolutionary Principles; Biosocial Evolution, Ecological Aspects, and Consciousness; Projects for the Future; In Memoriam. This Yearbook will be useful both for those who study interdisciplinary macroproblems and for specialists working in focused directions, as well as for those who are interested in evolutionary issues of Cosmology, Biology, History, Anthropology, Economics and other areas of study. More than that, this edition will challenge and excite your vision of your own life and the new discoveries going on around us!
Wholes that Cause their Parts: Organic Self-Reproduction and the Reality of Biological Teleology
A well-rehearsed move among teleological realists in the philosophy of biology is to base the idea of genuinely teleological forms of organic self-reproduction on a type of causality derived from Kant. Teleological realists have long argued for the causal possibility of this form of causality—in which a whole is considered the cause of its parts—as well as formulated a set of teleological criteria of adequacy for it. What is missing, to date, is an account of the mereological principles that govern the envisioned whole-to-part causality. When the latter principles are taken into account, we find that there is no version of whole-to-part causality that is mereologically, causally and teleologically possible all at once, as teleological realism requires.
Advances in Artificial Life, ECAL 2013, 2013
Human activities in outer space are producing increasing quantities of space "debris". This well-known fact posits the question about the value and use of space technologies after their operation period has expired. Rather than calling these non-functional objects "debris", we propose to treat them as "end-of-life allopoietic systems" with the potential of becoming autopoietic systems. In general, our utilitarian, anthropocentric, and control-oriented management of processes discourages research into emancipated, unfamiliar entities which do not (yet) appear in our ecosystems. However, outer space technology with its literal and symbolic remoteness presents an opportunity to transform utilitarian objects at their end-of-life into emancipated non-utilitarian living or lifelike systems without the danger of interaction with the existing living systems of our planet. Here we outline a composite approach to the challenge.
The Aristotelian ideas of nature ( physis) and technology (techné) are taken as a starting point for understanding what it would mean for technology to be truly living. Heideggerʼs critique of the conflation of scientific and technological thinking in the current era is accepted as demonstrating that humanity does not have a deep enough appreciation of the nature of life to harness its essence safely. Could the vision of harnessing life be realized, which we strongly doubt, living technology would give selected humans transforming powers that could be expected to exacerbate, rather than solve, current global problems. The source of human purposefulness, and hence of both technology and ethics, is identified in natureʼs emergent capability to instantiate informational representations in material forms. Ethics that are properly grounded in an appreciation of intrinsic value, especially that of life, demand that proposals to give humanity the capabilities of living technology address the social, political, economic, and environmental problems inherent in its development and potential deployment. Before any development is embarked on, steps must be taken to avoid living technology, whatever the term eventually designates, becoming available for destructive or antisocial purposes such as those that might devastate humanity or irrevocably damage the natural world.