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What Was Life?: Answers from Three Limit Biologies

Stefan Helmreich, Sophia Roosth, and Michele Friedner

in Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond

This chapter examines three limit biologies that theorize what life was—that is, they declare the possible end of “life”: Artificial Life, marine microbiology, and astrobiology. Artificial Life is a ... More

This chapter examines three limit biologies that theorize what life was—that is, they declare the possible end of “life”: Artificial Life, marine microbiology, and astrobiology. Artificial Life is a genre of theoretical biology that flourished most vigorously in the 1990s and sought to model living things in the medium of computer simulation. Marine microbiology is a field that has as its object of study the world's tiniest, most abundant, and metabolically extreme ocean creatures, including microbes at deep-sea volcanoes. Astrobiology is the study of life as it might exist on other worlds. The chapter argues that the conceptual trouble bedeviling “life” is shadowed by worries about what form “theory” might take in natural and social analysis these days. The emphasis is on how accounts of life forms in biology and ideas about social and cultural forms of life inform and deform one another.Less

An Archaeology Of Artificial Life, Underwater

Stefan Helmreich, Sophia Roosth, and Michele Friedner

in Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond

This chapter examines how scientists working on Artificial Life have understood their practices as situated historically. It first considers the practice of finding genealogies for Artificial Life, ... More

This chapter examines how scientists working on Artificial Life have understood their practices as situated historically. It first considers the practice of finding genealogies for Artificial Life, arguing that such a search for ancestors carries acute historiographical and epistemological dangers. It then comments on computer simulations that fashion the computer as a kind of fish tank into which users can peer to see artificial life forms swimming about. It also discusses a different realm of modeling, that of cognition in Artificial Intelligence. The chapter concludes by suggesting a mode of imagining history that it calls an underwater archaeology of knowledge. In an underwater archaeology of knowledge, representational artifacts become mixed in with portraits of the world, requiring new sorts of narrative disentangling and qualification.Less

Turing and the computer

B. Jack Copeland and Diane Proudfoot

in Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine: The Master Codebreaker's Struggle to build the Modern Computer

This chapter discusses Turing's contributions to the field of computing. Topics covered include the Turing machine, cryptanalytic machines, the ACE and the EDVAC, the Manchester computer, artificial ... More

This chapter discusses Turing's contributions to the field of computing. Topics covered include the Turing machine, cryptanalytic machines, the ACE and the EDVAC, the Manchester computer, artificial intelligence, and artificial life.Less

Nutrient cycling as an emergent property

David M. Wilkinson

in Fundamental Processes in Ecology: An earth systems approach

Arguments based on both in vitro and in silico models suggest that biogeochemical cycles will readily evolve on planets with life, along with many of the putative fundamental processes described in ... More

Arguments based on both in vitro and in silico models suggest that biogeochemical cycles will readily evolve on planets with life, along with many of the putative fundamental processes described in this book. Artificial life models illustrate the potential for these emergent cycling systems to have a positive Gaian effect. The well-known potential for exponential growth in unconstrained ecological systems suggests that these emergent systems will often regulate their environments around low nutrient states (biotic plunder), rather than at states which optimize productivity. In this context, it makes sense to define Gaia in relation to prolonged habitability of a planet, but not as a process which maximises biological productivity.Less

BOTTOM‐UP AND DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACHES

Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen

in Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong

This chapter surveys bottom‐up approaches to the development of artificial moral agents. These approaches apply methods from machine learning, Kohlberg's theory of moral development, and techniques ... More

This chapter surveys bottom‐up approaches to the development of artificial moral agents. These approaches apply methods from machine learning, Kohlberg's theory of moral development, and techniques from artificial life (Alife) and evolutionary robotics, such as evolution through genetic algorithms, to the goal of facilitating the emergence of moral capacities from general aspects of intelligence. Such approaches hold out the prospect that moral behavior is a self‐organizing phenomenon in which cooperation and a shared set of moral instincts (if not a “moral grammar”) might emerge – this despite the logic of game theory which seems to suggest only self‐interested rationality can prevail in an evolutionary contest. A primary challenge for bottom‐up approaches is how to provide sufficient safeguards against learning or evolving bad behaviors as well as good.Less

An Archaeology of Artificial Life, Underwater

Stefan Helmreich

in Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life

This chapter discusses how current designers of artificial creatures place their creations in a medium in order to make them seem lifelike, and provides a commentary on the practice of finding ... More

This chapter discusses how current designers of artificial creatures place their creations in a medium in order to make them seem lifelike, and provides a commentary on the practice of finding genealogies for Artificial Life. Floating shows how the effect of empiricity can be sustained through the medium of interpretation itself. Artificial Life has been no stranger to epistemological debates about the relation between the world and the agent that knows it. Like the Museum of Jurassic Technology, an institution that reproduces, repurposes, parodies, and confuses the very notion of a museum by archiving and displaying knowledge and artifacts that may or may not be part of actual human history, Artificial Life simulations may be “a setting of and for confabulation where hermeneutics is suspended.”Less

Digital Evolution and the Emergence of Complexity

John Johnston

in The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI

This chapter charts the history of artificial life (ALife) after Langton in relation to theories of evolution, emergence, and complex adaptive systems by examining a series of experiments carried out ... More

This chapter charts the history of artificial life (ALife) after Langton in relation to theories of evolution, emergence, and complex adaptive systems by examining a series of experiments carried out on various software platforms, including Thomas Ray’s Tierra, John Holland’s Echo, Christoph Adami’s Avida, Andrew Pargellis’ Amoeba, Tim Taylor’s Cosmos, and Larry Yaeger’s PolyWorld. It concludes by considering the limits of the first phase of ALife research and the new research initiatives represented by “living computation” and attempts to create an artificial protocell.Less

Open Evolution and Human Agency: The Pragmatics of Upstream Ethics in the Design of Artificial Life

George Khushf

in The Ethics of Protocells: Moral and Social Implications of Creating Life in the Laboratory

This chapter argues that ethical reflection must be an integral part of the development of protocell science and technology. It presents a representative example of a body of research in artificial ... More

This chapter argues that ethical reflection must be an integral part of the development of protocell science and technology. It presents a representative example of a body of research in artificial life connected with the design of a self-assembling membrane, and shows how this new, hybrid science undermines the conditions for a traditional post hoc, downstream mode of ethical reflection. This chapter shows that traditional ethical analysis is closely intertwined with a specific view of science and technology. It suggests that upstream ethics cannot be viewed as a simple adjunct to science.Less

Artificial Life and the Homunculus

in Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature

This chapter discusses artificial life and the homunculus. The vast literature focusing on alchemy in the debate on art and nature often draws on the spontaneous generation of animals for examples ... More

This chapter discusses artificial life and the homunculus. The vast literature focusing on alchemy in the debate on art and nature often draws on the spontaneous generation of animals for examples that are relevant to alchemical transmutation. Late antique and medieval theories of artificial life can be broken into two main categories: those predicated on the theory of spontaneous generation, primarily as outlined in the biological works of Aristotle; and those based on the cosmogonyc myths of a creator God, like the golem of medieval Judaism. One of the great pillars in the edifice of artificial life was Aristotle's theory of sexual, as opposed to spontaneous, generation. The concept of the marvelous power of male sperm, like the ability of specific types of matter to generate life spontaneously, opened up a vast field of speculation about the possibilities of artificial life.Less

Introduction: The Sistine Gap

Jessica Riskin

in Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life

This book is about a long tradition of attempts to sound the Sistine gap. It discusses the efforts to simulate life in machinery, to synthesize life out of material parts, and to measure living ... More

This book is about a long tradition of attempts to sound the Sistine gap. It discusses the efforts to simulate life in machinery, to synthesize life out of material parts, and to measure living beings against inanimate mechanisms. A historical approach to artificial life is also presented. The chapter then contributes to the current conventions regarding the nature of animal life, sentience, and human cognition. Moreover, the book is divided into three parts. Part 1 explores the efforts to connect intellect with matter, souls with mechanisms, magic with engineering. Part 2 emphasizes the importance of interactions within living beings, among the distributed parts of the complex systems that comprise them. Part 3 concentrates on the exchanges between creatures and the outside world, and on attempts to understand life in terms of these exchanges. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in this book is given.Less

Conclusion: Questions for Artificial Intelligence

Daeyeol Lee

in Birth of Intelligence: From RNA to Artificial Intelligence

To better prepare for the future society in which artificial intelligences (AI) will have much more pervasive influence on our lives, a better understanding of the difference between AI and human ... More

To better prepare for the future society in which artificial intelligences (AI) will have much more pervasive influence on our lives, a better understanding of the difference between AI and human intelligence is necessary. Human and biological intelligence cannot be separated from the process of self-replication. Therefore, a fundamental gap exists between human intelligence and AI until AI acquires artificial life. Humans’ social and metacognitive intelligence most clearly distinguish human intelligence from nonhuman intelligence. Although advances are likely to improve the functioning of AI, AI will remain a function of human activity. However, if AI can learn to self-replicate and thus become a life form, albeit a man-made one, outcomes become uncertain.Less

Iconicity and Dynamic

Inge Hinterwaldner

in The Systemic Image: A New Theory of Interactive Real-Time Simulations

Within real-time simulations, the calculated simulation dynamic is only one movement-generating instance. There exist further and other movement-generating elements of a sensorial nature. Typically, ... More

Within real-time simulations, the calculated simulation dynamic is only one movement-generating instance. There exist further and other movement-generating elements of a sensorial nature. Typically, the simulation program encompasses many diverse processes – internal and external ones – taking place simultaneously. Several artificial life applications are analysed with respect to the multi-layered dynamics and with a special focus on how the sensorial levels contribute motions not present in the simulation dynamics itself. Computer simulations also have the potential for deception (some applications aim at exploiting the suspense of disbelief), but surprisingly it is located in their domain, in the process and reaction or consequence design. The optical level follows other logics. Being aware of this fact with all its consequences is crucial for a critical and responsible attitude towards computer simulations.Less

Introduction

Wolfgang Banzhaf and Lidia Yamamoto

in Artificial Chemistries

The introduction to Artificial Chemistries discusses its root in Artificial Life research before explaining with a simple example from the mathematical area of Arithmetic what we can imagine under an ... More

The introduction to Artificial Chemistries discusses its root in Artificial Life research before explaining with a simple example from the mathematical area of Arithmetic what we can imagine under an artificial chemistry. It explains how some fundamental questions of Artificial Life are connected to questions of Artificial Chemistry and shows a few of the general features we’d expect to be exhibited by an AC.Less

Connectionism in an artificial life perspective: simulating motor, cognitive, and language development

Matthew Schlesinger and Domenico Parisi

in Neuroconstructivism Volume Two: Perspectives and Prospects

This chapter emphasises that adaptation can occur at a developmental timescale — within the lifetime of an individual — but also across individuals (phylogeny). To explore these interactions, it uses ... More

This chapter emphasises that adaptation can occur at a developmental timescale — within the lifetime of an individual — but also across individuals (phylogeny). To explore these interactions, it uses a modelling method referred to as ‘genetic algorithms’. This method combines the simulation of learning within the individual using standard neural network technique with an evolutionary selection process in which successive ‘generations’ of networks gradually evolve to change the learning properties of the individuals as a result of longer-term adaptive pressures. An important point is that while this kind of mechanism can be used to model processes occurring across the lifetimes of many individuals, it can also be used to model the slow evolution of neural or cognitive structures within the timescale of an individual developing child.Less

Design, Observation, Surprise! A Test of Emergence

Edmund M. A. Ronald, Moshe Sipper, and Mathieu S. Capcarrère

in Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science

This chapter illustrates how the concept of emergence has become a great attention grabber due to the striking behaviors demonstrated in artificial life experiments. Emergence has been called upon ... More

This chapter illustrates how the concept of emergence has become a great attention grabber due to the striking behaviors demonstrated in artificial life experiments. Emergence has been called upon conveniently whenever the unexpected intrudes into the visual field of the experimenter, consequently requiring or justifying an economy of explanation. This abuse of the term will eventually devalue its significance and put the concept of emergence itself under a bad light. In the absence of an acceptable definition, researchers in the field would be better off adopting an emergence certification mark that would garner approval from the ALife community. This standardization is the motivation behind the proposed “emergence test,” a set of criteria through which one can justify conferring the emergence.Less