1. G5BAIM Artificial Intelligence Methods
Graham Kendall
Artificial Life

2. “We have created artificial Life”
A-Life
Will we ever say
“We have created artificial Life”

3. A-Life
Past philosophical debates
Turing Test
Chinese Room
Will the next one be
Can we play God and create life

4. A-Life
Assume we can create a-life
Can we turn the computer off?
Could we be charged with murder?
If not, why do we think we have created life?

5. A-Life
What happens if a-life commits a crime?
Can we turn it off?
Is that capital punishment?
Can we put it in prison?What would we expect by putting “it” in prison
Punishment?
Rehabilitation?
Can we rehabilitate by re-programming - but is this genetic modification?

6. A-Life
1990, a group of scientists discussed if a-life should be granted civil rights
Would “they” ultimately demand civil rights

7. A-Life
“The day will come when people have moral concerns regarding artificial life – what are our obligations to the beings we create?
“Can we permit such beings to hurt and kill one another? We may have a moral problem in determining what actions we allow our artificial creatures to undertake. Perhaps we ultimately have to let our creatures be free to come to terms with themselves”
Heinz Pagels

8. A-Life
“By the middle of this century, mankind has acquired the power to extinguish life on Earth.
“By the middle of next century, he will be able to create it. Of the two it is hard to say which places the largest responsibility on our shoulders”
Chris Langton

9. A-Life
Isaac Asimov first law of robotics states
“A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

10. A-Life
A sensible approach?
What if a robot learns?
What if a mutation bypasses the routine that forces it to protect humans.
What if the robot learns to protect itself is more important than anything else
Ultimately kill a human in order to further its aims?

11. A-Life
UCLA biologist notes that “Artificial life violates Asimov’s First Law of Robotics by its very nature”

12. A-Life
Okay - so what is a-life?
Or, how will we recognise when we have created a-life?

13. 1987, first a-life conference, New Mexico
Within fifty to a hundred years a new class of organisms is likely to emerge. These organisms will be artificial in the sense that they will originally be designed by humans. However, they will reproduce, and evolve into something other than their original form; they will be “alive” under any reasonable definition of the word
James Doyne Farmer

14. A-Life
Is that a-life?
Something that is designed by humans but is able to reproduce and turn into something other than its original form?
You could write a program that is able to reproduce and turn itself into a form which differs from the original.
You have created alife. Do you agree?

15. A-Life
A counter argument is that all we can do on a computer is simulate life
We never actually create it. This is similar (if not the same) to the arguments about strong and weak AI.

16. A-Life
As far back as two thousand years ago, Aristotle said by possessing life implied that “a thing can nourish itself and decay”
Does this mean that alife in a computer should provide the energy to power the computer?
It is now almost universally accepted that self-reproduction is also a condition for life

17. A-Life - Seminal Work
John von Neumann
Believed that biological organisms could be described using logic
There is no randomness, no mysticism; just one event following another in a deterministic manner
In this way, biological organisms could be viewed as machines, in particular an automata

18. A-Life - Seminal Work
Try this
Our brains have a finite number of neurons
At any one instant our brain can in one state of the billions of possible states that are reachable by the neurons and connections
The brain switches state when it receives an input
Is this deterministic?
If it is, then an FSM can replicate life!

19. A-Life - Seminal Work - CA’s
Von Neumann - Lake/Creatures
Ulam suggested that a-life could exist on a checkerboard type structure
An FSM or CA - with the collection of cells being called an organism

20. A-Life - Seminal Work - CA’s
von Neumann developed the first CA
Each cell had twenty nine possible states
von Neumann “painted” an organism on the grid. Essentially it was a body (a rectangle) and a tail
He was trying to replicate the “creature”

21. A-Life - Seminal Work - CA’s
The organism was complex
He developed it so that the reproduction instructions were contained in the tail of the animal
A further challenge was to ensure that any offspring were capable of reproduction and were not sterile or had been fatally mutated which may not show itself for a number of generations

22. A-Life - Seminal Work - CA’s
John Conway - Game of Life
Two states
Simple Rules
Proved to be a Turing Machine

23. A-Life - Seminal Work - CA’s
Craig Reynolds - Boids
Emergent Behaviour
Non-Programmed Behaviour
Follow Simple Rules
Use Local Information

24. A-Life - Seminal Work - CA’s
Will we ever create a-life?
How will we know?
How will we treat it?
Finally - are any of these a-life?

25. Your guess is as good as mine!!!!
Good luck in the exam

26. G5BAIM Artificial Intelligence Methods
Graham Kendall
End of Artificial Life