G5BAIM Artificial Intelligence Methods Graham Kendall Artificial Life

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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

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.”

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?

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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!

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

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”

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

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

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

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?

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

G5BAIM Artificial Intelligence Methods Graham Kendall End of Artificial Life