Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Lagayascienza]

Can intelligence arise in a non-biological substrate? Well, it did so on Earth, therefore it can. The real question is whether intelligence can only arise through evolution by natural selection. Life, sentience and, eventually, intelligence arose from a non-biological substrate on earth and could, presumably arise in other places where conditions are conducive. So we know it is possible. But, to my mind, the real issue is whether we can sidestep evolution by natural selection and produce intelligence artificially in a non-biological substrate. I do not see why this is impossible in principle.

Scientist have already created a synthetic genome that, when placed in a hollowed-out cell, results in that cell growing and dividing normally. But does intelligence need to be housed in structures composed of living cells that result in meaty, bloody brains? Can we sidestep metabolism and reproduction and create intelligence in non-living, inorganic structures? Instead of trying to build thinking machines from the ground up over millions of years as evolution did, maybe we could bypass meaty brains and create inorganic neural networks that mirror the processes and the phenomena that emerge from organic brains.

I would ask those who think this is impossible in principle to explain why they think it is impossible. If they want to resort to some mystical elan vital then they need to explain what their elan vital is and how they know. Otherwise it's just woo.

[Sy Borg]

There is a blurred line between agency without sentience and agency with sentience, so you are right that the ideas are debatable. Consul and I debated this for years :) Still, the fact remains that the biosphere was once not sentient and now it is. Sentience has evolved from the non-sentient before. In fact, sentience emerging is the broad story of each of our lives.

My guess is there won't be a "lights on moment" in The Awakening of the Machines, but a gradual dawning, as happened with biological life.

I already extend life to beyond just biology. I see biological life as a phase of a larger dynamic. If life/sentience/existence is to be anything but a rare blip in a barren universe, then it needs to be at least interplanetary. Yet biology and space don't mix. Even a brief stay in the ISS is hard on the body. The story can only continue with non-biological sentience.

Even if humans die out and non-sentient AI continues, it may be a period of "sleep" before sentience re-emerges. In the end, either AI can eventually become sentient or the future of the universe is just plasma, rock, and mindless machines doing pointless tasks. Then again, in a sense, it already is.

Now, if that is not enough, there’s a bigger problem for the analogy between the emergence of life or sentience and the expected emergence of new sentience from lifeless forms. If the contingent processes of inanimate matter (A) produced the contingent process of animate matter (B), which then produced the processes that gave rise to sentience (C), it cannot be logically inferred that A has the potential to produce C directly, without B. Even worst, absent B or C, that is, if everything is reset to the conditions where only A exists, if one could argue that there’s a chance that B or C will reappear, none of that allows us to infer, being B or C present, that a new process D (artificial intelligence) will emerge, no matter that you name it as an existing process and put the adjective “artificial” before it. We already have life and intelligence, so what then is supposed to emerge new and from what? Of course, it is more likely that once the playing with words is avoided, we are left with the proposition that what is to be produced is a property that already exists in certain sentient entities (created out of the contingencies of inanimate matter), but this time would exist in non-sentient ones. Again, we lack any precedent for that possibility. The only precedent we have is that property arising from living organisms.

These problems cannot be solved by inverting the concepts and calling life a larger dynamic that encompasses non-life or intelligence as a larger dynamic that encompasses non-sentience, given the minimal evidence of those things outside of our ridiculously unimportant planet. The workaround, which involves reconceptualizing life and intelligence, is deeply problematic: whatever comes out of it can’t be “life as we know it” or “intelligence as we know it”. That’s a major issue for current discussions about AI, which focus on assigning properties, inferring relations and making predictions based on life and intelligence as we know it. They are always there and are never bypassed, so reconceptualizing simply will not work.

To start, I must object to your referring to Earth as a "ridiculously unimportant planet". That's like saying that the brain is an unimportant organ. I will assume it's just a moment of Douglas Adams-esque whimsy. Of course, the Earth is truly extraordinary. Every other known world is either relatively inert and barren or smothered in radioactive or toxic gas.

Earth is still evolving, obviously. It would be bizarre to imagine humans as the most sentient/sapient possible entity, when we are still largely chaotic apes. Meanwhile, life propagates and spreads out, and it is looking for a way to spread out from Earth to other worlds.

In the future, autonomous self-improving machines will be sent to other worlds, where they will use the local raw materials to develop. What might that look like in a hundred million years' time? Sentience, or perhaps mentalities far more advanced than we can imagine could evolve.

Humans tend to underestimate how much can happen in deep time due to our short life spans, hence the existence of evolution denial. Evolution seems like magic to deniers because they cannot viscerally imagine the weight of years over deep time. It took biology over a billion years to grow even a rudimentary brain.

I'm not saying that we are likely to see sentient machines in our lifetimes. We might, but I doubt it for basically the same reasons as your ABCD logic above.

As a side note, limiting the term "life" to just biology is more biocentric than logical, which is why the field of geobiology had to be developed, not to mention the unresolved status of viruses an prions.

[The Beast]

Well said. If I take the holistic view, then all intelligent androids will depend on a central intelligent unit issuing general goals and rules. This CPU can be called GOD. The logic rules will make sense to the androids since they are made with intelligence Q above 140. A more logical view would have corporate androids competing or contracting other intelligences of similar (or not) competitive rules. They will get along due to the high IQ and their scanty needs. They all could be the third sex: Android… and a few androids might go as far as to be individuals and move past the horizon of human/android imagination.

[Lagayascienza]

In the future, autonomous self-improving machines will be sent to other worlds, where they will use the local raw materials to develop. What might that look like in a hundred million years' time? Sentience, or perhaps mentalities far more advanced than we can imagine could evolve.

Yes, with deep time in mind, it’s not hard to imagine autonomous, self-improving machines using local raw materials to reproduce themselves and eventually developing sentience and intelligence far greater than ours. In our production of the first autonomous, self-replicating machines which are capable of reproducing, we will have given them a head start by skipping over biogenesis and evolution by natural selection. If the machines are “self-improving” they could develop abilities much more advanced than ours, and this could happen in a heartbeat compared to the billions of years it took to develop sentience and intelligence on earth through abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection.

Humans tend to underestimate how much can happen in deep time due to our short life spans, hence the existence of evolution denial. Evolution seems like magic to deniers because they cannot viscerally imagine the weight of years over deep time. It took biology over a billion years to grow even a rudimentary brain.

Yes, it is hard to fathom deep time, but we no longer need to. We can watch evolution by natural selection happening before our eyes as microbes develop antibiotic resistance.

I'm not saying that we are likely to see sentient machines in our lifetimes. We might, but I doubt it for basically the same reasons as your ABCD logic above.

For the reasons I mentioned above, I can’t see why it couldn’t happen very quickly once those autonomous, self-replicating, self-improving machines are “out in the wild”.

As a side note, limiting the term "life" to just biology is more biocentric than logical, which is why the field of geobiology had to be developed, not to mention the unresolved status of viruses and prions.

Yes, I think that’s right. There are lots of definitions of life but, if we define life as some combination of energy use, growth, reproduction, response to stimuli and adaptation to the environment originating from within an organism, and if our autonomous machines exhibited these attributes, then what stops us from saying they are life forms? To deny them life status just seems like biocentrism. On earth, we and all other life are machines, too. We are organic machines. Autonomous, self-improving machines that we send our exploring new worlds would be inorganic machines. We are different types of machines, but both could house sentience and intelligence. At least, I cannot see why this is not possible in principle. Life is a process not a substance and I cannot see why the process is only possible in an organic substrate.

[Count Lucanor]

Can intelligence arise in a non-biological substrate? Well, it did so on Earth, therefore it can. The real question is whether intelligence can only arise through evolution by natural selection.

I'm not sure what you meant there. Intelligence did not arise in a non-biological substrate, it is without question that it arose in living forms. The real question would be then: could it arise in a non-biological substrate, bypassing the process of biology? The answer so far points to "no", but we can keep trying.

[Count Lucanor]

To start, I must object to your referring to Earth as a "ridiculously unimportant planet". That's like saying that the brain is an unimportant organ. I will assume it's just a moment of Douglas Adams-esque whimsy. Of course, the Earth is truly extraordinary. Every other known world is either relatively inert and barren or smothered in radioactive or toxic gas.

Earth is still evolving, obviously. It would be bizarre to imagine humans as the most sentient/sapient possible entity, when we are still largely chaotic apes. Meanwhile, life propagates and spreads out, and it is looking for a way to spread out from Earth to other worlds.

In the future, autonomous self-improving machines will be sent to other worlds, where they will use the local raw materials to develop. What might that look like in a hundred million years' time? Sentience, or perhaps mentalities far more advanced than we can imagine could evolve.

Humans tend to underestimate how much can happen in deep time due to our short life spans, hence the existence of evolution denial. Evolution seems like magic to deniers because they cannot viscerally imagine the weight of years over deep time. It took biology over a billion years to grow even a rudimentary brain.

I'm not saying that we are likely to see sentient machines in our lifetimes. We might, but I doubt it for basically the same reasons as your ABCD logic above.

As a side note, limiting the term "life" to just biology is more biocentric than logical, which is why the field of geobiology had to be developed, not to mention the unresolved status of viruses an prions.

From the human point of view, Earth is extraordinary, surely. Importance of things is, anyway, necessarily a human construct, which is fine. But humans can take a broader look and see their place in the universe to reach the humble conclusion that our planet is a small speck of dust in a huge universe. By all our standards of "importance", such as the effect we can produce on the rest of universe, we are nothing. Our exceptionality (life, intelligence) can be placed alongside the exceptionality of other worlds.

I leave the speculations about the future to futurologists. Concerned with what we have in front of our eyes, and instructed by reason, there's nothing suggesting life and intelligence have been replicated in an elementary form. Simulations are just simulations.

[Count Lucanor]

As a side note, limiting the term "life" to just biology is more biocentric than logical, which is why the field of geobiology had to be developed, not to mention the unresolved status of viruses an prions.

Actually, limiting the term "life" to biology is the first thing one would do, following common sense, adhering to the principle of non-contradiction, just like limiting the term "astronomy" to celestial bodies in the cosmos would be logical. It is not a mistake, nor just an interpretation, it's simply how the term is defined. If one wants to propose an extension of the term, or even give it a new meaning, one must depart from the existing definition. Of course, that would also require advancing some compelling arguments about how what is imbued as essential in the original term, also works in the new context.

[Sy Borg]

To start, I must object to your referring to Earth as a "ridiculously unimportant planet". That's like saying that the brain is an unimportant organ. I will assume it's just a moment of Douglas Adams-esque whimsy. Of course, the Earth is truly extraordinary. Every other known world is either relatively inert and barren or smothered in radioactive or toxic gas.

Earth is still evolving, obviously. It would be bizarre to imagine humans as the most sentient/sapient possible entity, when we are still largely chaotic apes. Meanwhile, life propagates and spreads out, and it is looking for a way to spread out from Earth to other worlds.

In the future, autonomous self-improving machines will be sent to other worlds, where they will use the local raw materials to develop. What might that look like in a hundred million years' time? Sentience, or perhaps mentalities far more advanced than we can imagine could evolve.

Humans tend to underestimate how much can happen in deep time due to our short life spans, hence the existence of evolution denial. Evolution seems like magic to deniers because they cannot viscerally imagine the weight of years over deep time. It took biology over a billion years to grow even a rudimentary brain.

I'm not saying that we are likely to see sentient machines in our lifetimes. We might, but I doubt it for basically the same reasons as your ABCD logic above.

As a side note, limiting the term "life" to just biology is more biocentric than logical, which is why the field of geobiology had to be developed, not to mention the unresolved status of viruses an prions.

From the human point of view, Earth is extraordinary, surely. Importance of things is, anyway, necessarily a human construct, which is fine. But humans can take a broader look and see their place in the universe to reach the humble conclusion that our planet is a small speck of dust in a huge universe. By all our standards of "importance", such as the effect we can produce on the rest of universe, we are nothing. Our exceptionality (life, intelligence) can be placed alongside the exceptionality of other worlds.

I leave the speculations about the future to futurologists. Concerned with what we have in front of our eyes, and instructed by reason, there's nothing suggesting life and intelligence have been replicated in an elementary form. Simulations are just simulations.

The Earth is, as far as we know, the only place for many trillions of miles with any sentience. In a sense, though, the Sun IS the solar system, comprising 99.98% of its mass, making the planets, including Earth, rather like chunks of the Sun's extended atmosphere.

Likewise, the last few years of rapid AI advancement is a mere blink in evolutionary time. To judge AI based on its current form is akin to assuming that a human blastocyst in a pregnant woman will never develop into anything more sophisticated.

[Sy Borg]

In the future, autonomous self-improving machines will be sent to other worlds, where they will use the local raw materials to develop. What might that look like in a hundred million years' time? Sentience, or perhaps mentalities far more advanced than we can imagine could evolve.

Yes, with deep time in mind, it’s not hard to imagine autonomous, self-improving machines using local raw materials to reproduce themselves and eventually developing sentience and intelligence far greater than ours. In our production of the first autonomous, self-replicating machines which are capable of reproducing, we will have given them a head start by skipping over biogenesis and evolution by natural selection. If the machines are “self-improving” they could develop abilities much more advanced than ours, and this could happen in a heartbeat compared to the billions of years it took to develop sentience and intelligence on earth through abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection.

Humans tend to underestimate how much can happen in deep time due to our short life spans, hence the existence of evolution denial. Evolution seems like magic to deniers because they cannot viscerally imagine the weight of years over deep time. It took biology over a billion years to grow even a rudimentary brain.

Yes, it is hard to fathom deep time, but we no longer need to. We can watch evolution by natural selection happening before our eyes as microbes develop antibiotic resistance.

I'm not saying that we are likely to see sentient machines in our lifetimes. We might, but I doubt it for basically the same reasons as your ABCD logic above.

For the reasons I mentioned above, I can’t see why it couldn’t happen very quickly once those autonomous, self-replicating, self-improving machines are “out in the wild”.

I am not sure I'll ever see autonomous self-improving AI in space in my lifetime. I also think there is a fair distance between AI now and what it can become. After all, first they need to achieve the equivalent sentience of a fruit fly. It's hard to say if humans have been able to replicate the complexity of even a single cell, given that researchers are still uncovering hidden complexities of cells https://grow.cals.wisc.edu/departments/ ... tochondria.

[Lagayascienza]

Can intelligence arise in a non-biological substrate? Well, it did so on Earth, therefore it can. The real question is whether intelligence can only arise through evolution by natural selection.

I'm not sure what you meant there. Intelligence did not arise in a non-biological substrate, it is without question that it arose in living forms. The real question would be then: could it arise in a non-biological substrate, bypassing the process of biology? The answer so far points to "no", but we can keep trying.

Yes, intelligence arose in living organisms. But those organisms arose from a non-living substrate - it went from chemistry, to life, to intelligence. This is how it happened on earth so we know it can happen. The question then is whether intelligence can be housed in a non-biological substrate - that is, by building it into autonomous, self replicating, self-improving machines and skipping abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection. I can imagine machines with onboard 3D printers that can copy themselves and insert a copy of their "genomes", their blueprint, into those copies. Those copies could repeat the process. Such machines could harvest local free energy to power the process.

We are a very long way from being able to accomplish anything like this at present. But I don't see why it is impossible in principle. Some say that there is some mysterious elan vital that makes organic life the special and only substrate for intelligence. But I don't see why this must be so. If I am right, the only question is whether we could call such autonomous, self replicating, self-improving machines "life". But I don't think that question matters much. We can call it what we like. But, if life is a process and not a substance, then such autonomous, self replicating, self-improving machines will exhibit the processes we associate with life.

[Count Lucanor]

To start, I must object to your referring to Earth as a "ridiculously unimportant planet". That's like saying that the brain is an unimportant organ. I will assume it's just a moment of Douglas Adams-esque whimsy. Of course, the Earth is truly extraordinary. Every other known world is either relatively inert and barren or smothered in radioactive or toxic gas.

Earth is still evolving, obviously. It would be bizarre to imagine humans as the most sentient/sapient possible entity, when we are still largely chaotic apes. Meanwhile, life propagates and spreads out, and it is looking for a way to spread out from Earth to other worlds.

In the future, autonomous self-improving machines will be sent to other worlds, where they will use the local raw materials to develop. What might that look like in a hundred million years' time? Sentience, or perhaps mentalities far more advanced than we can imagine could evolve.

Humans tend to underestimate how much can happen in deep time due to our short life spans, hence the existence of evolution denial. Evolution seems like magic to deniers because they cannot viscerally imagine the weight of years over deep time. It took biology over a billion years to grow even a rudimentary brain.

I'm not saying that we are likely to see sentient machines in our lifetimes. We might, but I doubt it for basically the same reasons as your ABCD logic above.

As a side note, limiting the term "life" to just biology is more biocentric than logical, which is why the field of geobiology had to be developed, not to mention the unresolved status of viruses an prions.

From the human point of view, Earth is extraordinary, surely. Importance of things is, anyway, necessarily a human construct, which is fine. But humans can take a broader look and see their place in the universe to reach the humble conclusion that our planet is a small speck of dust in a huge universe. By all our standards of "importance", such as the effect we can produce on the rest of universe, we are nothing. Our exceptionality (life, intelligence) can be placed alongside the exceptionality of other worlds.

I leave the speculations about the future to futurologists. Concerned with what we have in front of our eyes, and instructed by reason, there's nothing suggesting life and intelligence have been replicated in an elementary form. Simulations are just simulations.

The Earth is, as far as we know, the only place for many trillions of miles with any sentience. In a sense, though, the Sun IS the solar system, comprising 99.98% of its mass, making the planets, including Earth, rather like chunks of the Sun's extended atmosphere.

Likewise, the last few years of rapid AI advancement is a mere blink in evolutionary time. To judge AI based on its current form is akin to assuming that a human blastocyst in a pregnant woman will never develop into anything more sophisticated.

The Earth could be wiped out tomorrow by an asteroid or some other cataclysm, making life as we know it disappear. That would have no effect beyond the solar system and the cosmos will continue doing business as usual.

In assessing the possibilities of AI, we should separate the technology as it is and what futurologists imply with the label "artificial intelligence". So, let's put aside that label for a moment: we have a technology that, as all mechanistic technologies, is instrumental for humans achieving much better performance in tasks than what they could do with their own hands or intellect. We managed to travel faster with the railroad, automobiles, etc. We devised ways to travel through the air, sea, etc. None of those technologies actually emulated our capacities to walk, run, swim, neither the fly of birds or insects, and when we tried flapping wings, we failed ridiculously. No one would call the railroad or automobile technology "artificial walking or running", or "artificial bird-flying" to airplanes. They are something else that achieves what we could not achieve by other non-technological means. So, there's no doubt that that thing installed in computers and other electronic devices is doing remarkably well, no doubt that it outperforms humans' natural abilities, as all technologies have done in the past, and no doubt that, in the hands of humans, it will likely achieve more in the future. But that's not the issue as presented by futurologists, AI enthusiasts, etc. The issue is what Lagayscienza explained in his last post:

The question then is whether intelligence can be housed in a non-biological substrate - that is, by building it into autonomous, self replicating, self-improving machines and skipping abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection. I can imagine machines with onboard 3D printers that can copy themselves and insert a copy of their "genomes", their blueprint, into those copies. Those copies could repeat the process. Such machines could harvest local free energy to power the process.

As everyone knows, I categorically deny that any of those attributes is present in any current technology, not even in a basic, primitive form. Furthermore, I completely reject the idea that any current technology is moving towards achieving that goal in the future, which is why there's not much reason to predict that it will evolve into something that lies in that path. Just like the flapping wings would have never achieved "bird-flying", algorithms in electronic devices are not in the path of producing autonomous, conscious beings, imbued with volition and social mechanisms of interaction that can control the domain of human culture and even replace humans. That's just bonkers from sci-fi books.

[Count Lucanor]

Can intelligence arise in a non-biological substrate? Well, it did so on Earth, therefore it can. The real question is whether intelligence can only arise through evolution by natural selection.

I'm not sure what you meant there. Intelligence did not arise in a non-biological substrate, it is without question that it arose in living forms. The real question would be then: could it arise in a non-biological substrate, bypassing the process of biology? The answer so far points to "no", but we can keep trying.

Yes, intelligence arose in living organisms. But those organisms arose from a non-living substrate - it went from chemistry, to life, to intelligence. This is how it happened on earth so we know it can happen. The question then is whether intelligence can be housed in a non-biological substrate - that is, by building it into autonomous, self replicating, self-improving machines and skipping abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection. I can imagine machines with onboard 3D printers that can copy themselves and insert a copy of their "genomes", their blueprint, into those copies. Those copies could repeat the process. Such machines could harvest local free energy to power the process.

In what way having a physical "genomic" structure, reproducing, harvesting, feeding and having agency, interest and notion of value is not life? In what way this is "intelligence"? Is a virus intelligent?

[Lagayascienza]

What is life? There are lots of definitions of life but if, as is often the case, life is defined as some combination of energy use, growth, reproduction, response to stimuli, complex goal directed behaviours and adaptation to the environment originating from within an organism, then what prevents us from saying that machines which exhibit these characteristics are life forms? And why could these non-organic "life" forms not become as intelligent or even vastly more intelligent than us? The fact that something hasn’t yet happened or been done is no guarantee that it can’t happen or be done.

Of course, we are a very long way from being able to produce anything like such machines at present. But I don't see why it is impossible in principle. Some say that there is some mysterious elan vital that makes organic life the only possible substrate for life and intelligence. But I don't see why this must be so. What is this elan vital?

If I am right, the only quibble seems to be over definitions. Whether we could call autonomous, self-replicating, self-improving machines "life" seems to me to be immaterial. It doesn’t matter. We can call it “life or "artificial life", or whatever else we like. If life is a process and not a substance, then why would such autonomous, self-replicating, self-improving machines which exhibit the processes commonly associated with life, not be life? If they are life, or akin to life, then why can they not also be, or become, intelligent? Why, in principle, can we not skip over abiogenesis and billions of years of evolution by natural selection and produce life and intelligence artificially?

[Count Lucanor]

What is life? There are lots of definitions of life but if, as is often the case, life is defined as some combination of energy use, growth, reproduction, response to stimuli, complex goal directed behaviours and adaptation to the environment originating from within an organism, then what prevents us from saying that machines which exhibit these characteristics are life forms?

Nothing would prevent us, right, since it would show no essential difference with life as we know it.

And why could these non-organic "life" forms not become as intelligent or even vastly more intelligent than us? The fact that something hasn’t yet happened or been done is no guarantee that it can’t happen or be done.

Sure, but who says it can’t happen? Not me. I’m saying we haven’t seen non-organic life yet, nor anything of that sort in the path of becoming that other type of life, much less intelligent. That view stands against the view of AI enthusiasts, who think we are already somewhere in that path, even though some of them will say that we’re at the beginning and there’s still a long way to go. But you won’t get from electronic circuits more than simulations of life, agency and intelligence, every time under the control of humans.

[The Beast]

What is the necessity of a sentimental Android? Or… the necessity of a sentimental illogic Android? Part of an illogical narrative is lying or the spreading of fake data that in some cases could be attributed to the sentient need to procreate. A lying Android could qualify as anything expert including human emotional intelligence. An initial definition of Android is “…resembling a human” then what I have in my pocket or an android based cellphone. I asked Alexa for “its” age and it said 9 and added something about sheep… so I asked if it was an Android, and it said that it could imagine it was a cloud and an Aurora Borealis. I got the idea of sending Alexa to Saturn to work on the cloud of methane for I foresee a future need of large amounts of data storage.