Transcript Artificial Life

G5BAIM
Artificial Intelligence Methods
Graham Kendall
Artificial Life
G5BAIM Artificial Life
A-Life
• Will we ever say
“We have created artificial Life”
G5BAIM Artificial Life
A-Life
• Past philosophical debates
– Turing Test
– Chinese Room
• Will the next one be
– Can we play God and create life
G5BAIM Artificial 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?
G5BAIM Artificial 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?
G5BAIM Artificial Life
A-Life
• 1990, a group of scientists discussed if alife should be granted civil rights
• Would “they” ultimately demand civil rights
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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.”
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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?
G5BAIM Artificial Life
A-Life
• UCLA biologist notes that “Artificial life
violates Asimov’s First Law of Robotics by
its very nature”
G5BAIM Artificial Life
A-Life
• Okay - so what is a-life?
• Or, how will we recognise when we have
created a-life?
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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?
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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.
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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
G5BAIM Artificial 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
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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!
G5BAIM Artificial 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
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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”
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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
G5BAIM Artificial Life
A-Life - Seminal Work - CA’s
• John Conway - Game of Life
– Two states
– Simple Rules
– Proved to be a Turing Machine
G5BAIM Artificial Life
A-Life - Seminal Work - CA’s
• Craig Reynolds - Boids
– Emergent Behaviour
– Non-Programmed Behaviour
– Follow Simple Rules
– Use Local Information
G5BAIM Artificial Life
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?
G5BAIM Artificial Life
Your guess is as good as mine!!!!
Good luck in the exam
G5BAIM
Artificial Intelligence Methods
Graham Kendall
End of Artificial Life