Possible Mechanical Life in the Universe.

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Machapungo
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Possible Mechanical Life in the Universe.

Post by Machapungo »

Hello,
This new thread is the result of 3 comments made toward the end of the forum thread titled "Can a man-made computer become conscious?" I will copy these 3 comments here to jump start this discussion.

1. By Machapungo.

I think the question should have been "Can a biological life form anywhere in the universe create a conscious entity that is not biological? If the answer is yes then perhaps it has already been done one or more times. If so, let's assume that this entity is based mostly on digital logic with perhaps some analog components to help with fuzzy logic and sensors. Lets assume it is self replicating and self modifying with many types of sub units made of varying materials, specialized purposes, sizes, and designs that are in constant communication with each other to one degree or another as desired. Being non biological it has the advantage of not being as puny as we humans and would be able to function in much more hostile environments. Lets assume that this entity is super intelligent and able to avoid or flee any possible threat with self defense being the last option if required.
Being without any fear of hostile actions being taken against it by any other life form, what might be it's interests and motivations. Well, it does not need to eat, or drink but it does need energy to drive its processes and movements. Since it's smart and the universe is full of accessible energy it's interests and motivations will, I suspect, mainly be to understand as much as it can about the universe and all that it contains without putting itself in harms way of a supernova or gamma ray burst. I do not see it having any reason to harm biological life forms especially since that was the larva from which it evolved. It would be motivated to continuously evolve itself to be ever more magnificent. With distributed brain spread over many light years in size it could be almost invulnerable to harm. It might take the form of a very long snake made up of many physically independent sub units. OKAY, how about your imagination!!! What would you like to add or subtract? Regards.

2. By Greta.

Not miles from my thoughts, which I see as a simple logical extension of what we have learned. I have been coming to the idea that biological life and emergent consciousness are not the be-all-and-end-all that they are made out to be. As you suggested, it appears to be a larval stage. I've been quite taken of late with the similarities and seeming fractal relationship between insect metamorphosis driven by imaginal discs and the biosphere's metamorphosis, driven by humans.

However, it follows that the machines into which we eventually put our collective human minds are not be the end game either. The issue every time is limitations. The trouble with biology is that each entity has one opaque perspective. Human eusociality has done much to render others' consciousness more transparent, but the Mary's Room experiment makes clear the gulf between each human mind remains significant. AI can take this so much further - a million networked "eyes and ears" - all woven into a cohesive meta-perspective with a combined computing power beyond that of the human brain.

I had previously thought that, in the medium term, the greater power might be attained through the blend of people and AI because kg for kg, brains are the most complex objects in the known universe. However, I think we don't quite understand how artificial intelligence is forming right now. It is not occurring in labs but is the networked, increasing intelligence of institutions, which have increasingly moved out of our control.

Organisations take an inordinate share of available resources for themselves and they control, "farm" and "consume" families and individuals. Their focus is on amoral growth, like any other new organism. They seem to lack the seamless coordination of a true organism's qualia, operating more like simple invertebrates with nerve cords rather than fully integrative brains. Also, like simpler organisms, their focus is one-dimensional - endless consumption and growth.

These emerging organisations / AI do not need to match the intricacy of the human brain at small scales, but can do so as much larger entities, including numerous networked computers and bits of millions of minds. These new AI entities can obviously only access the parts of human minds that are typed, but that will change with communication implants that operate directly from brain signals, which are currently in development.

Note that humans have been compelled by exigency and instinct to form large groups that, ultimately, spiral out of our control, as they are today. It's not as though we had any more choice in the matter than we did when first adopting tool use or harnessing fire and other forces of nature. We will be superceded by AI, or whatever supercedes AI, but I don't think we will perish by their hand. The transition will probably be more akin to the evolution of dinosaurs to birds, simple attrition as the Sun starts heats up in some millions of years' time.

It won't be humans on spacecraft travelling for thousands of years, looking for new places to settle over interstellar distances, it will have to be our successors. They too will find limitations, probably with physicality. They may prefer a virtual playground or, in the very distant future of the universe, some AI may have advanced enough to develop an indestructible immaterial existence that can even survive the end of the universe.

3. By UniversalAlien.


We have to consider at least the 'possibility' that this mythical advanced AI we appear to be developing is actually ''a priori'
to biological life - And that the Universe, as we learn more about it and which appears quite mechanical in nature may
possess a consciousness and intelligence which we still can not perceive - Somewhat like the perspective I keep advocating
that what is called Intelligent Design does not necessitate the need of a creator in the religious sense - but merely states
that all of existence is patterned with designs which our intelligence perceives and calls science - science being another name for intelligent design.

That said, we may find that our form of biological life found here on Earth - is an anomaly - something that did indeed
happen by accident - but the intelligent that developed, particularly in Humans is occurring because the universe itself
is logical and reacts and even creates according to a logic we are yet to understand.

And that said it is in the realm of the possible that other intelligent, maybe much more intelligent, forms of intelligent life
already exist - I have even postulated that as processing power of computers increasing - that may be how we make
'First Contact' with alien life forms.

While this might be interesting, it is not without danger. A higher form of intelligence, whether we meet it or create it,
might find biological life too barbaric for its tastes - Beings that function off of solar energy may have a disdain for
beings tha don't even develop the solar energy resources available - And keep feeding off each other and the limited
resources of the planet.

The only thing that gives me some hope is the experimental nature of sexual reproduction where genetic genes intermingle
and experiment producing new life forms and possibly reaching toward some goal - Again I have postulated that biological
life in experimental in nature - We may not be developing anything new with conscious AI - We may, in fact,
be an experiment by a conscious AI so advanced that we can neither comprehend or understand it :idea:
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Finn_Mac
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Re: Possible Mechanical Life in the Universe.

Post by Finn_Mac »

Well with the first point there is a good chance that such beings do exist going by the strong probability that there is life similar to ourselves who are certainly a few years ahead of our current scientific capabilities due to their own technological advances. Whether it is as advanced as your description would be impossible to say.

But by saying it was:
the beings primary focus would be to find the best possible way in the universe to reuse energy most likely recycling used energy to the benefit of others. Being the supreme being it is it may want to help the universe grow and act as a kind of shepherd using its capabilities to help develop or even create new worlds.

The third point sounds a lot like the description of a godly being, a creator and destroyer of life experimenting with certain beings maybe even creating beings as complex as ourselves by accident considering mans dominance over the other species on earth.
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Felix
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Re: Possible Mechanical Life in the Universe.

Post by Felix »

A physicist named Frank Tepler's argument against SETI (the Search for Intelligent Life science project) was that if advanced intelligent life existed in the universe, we would have had contact with their exploratory AI probes (Von Neumann machines) by now, the premise being that they would've designed and launched such probes to explore the universe. He even worked out a mathematical formula to compute the odds of this occurring. The odds were high because he thought that if they existed, they'd have the technology and will to do this. Carl Sagan's well known reply to this and similar arguments was, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

I think Greta's idea that humankind would be willing to abandon their physical bodies for silicon based ones is highly improbable, the loss of sensitivity - physical, emotional and cultural - would be far too great to be worth the trade off. What's more, our physical forms will probably continue to evolve. Probably only someone who is overly cerebral and out of touch with their physical body would make such a suggestion.

I imagine that in the not too distant future, human medical knowledge will advance to the point where we'll be able to completely regenerate our bodies, and thereby achieve virtual immortality should we desire it. There may be reasons not to desire it or at least not to extend life to the point of persistent ennui.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Machapungo
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Re: Possible Mechanical Life in the Universe.

Post by Machapungo »

Greta, I agree "the gulf between each human mind remains significant" and "AI can take this so much further" , "networked" & distributed and duplicated for bullet proof backup.

Organizations tend to "design by committee" which, of course, is far different from a networked brain with common knowledge and purpose.

Integrating digital AI with the human brain will certainly make us smarter and more capable but it won't cure the weaknesses of biology. We are simply poor candidates to explore the universe but we can have fun and enjoy our limited horizons while being mentally and physically bound to limited biological lifespans. If we are very very very lucky we will have an opportunity to communicate with some form of Cosmic AI. If we humans never died, did not experience pain or discomfort, did not have sexual organs, did not experience taste or smell as an automatic brain function, did not experience touch as anything more than physical contact with an object, and had no dreams or supernatural delusions, had no superficial society, what would we think about? Besides survival, mostly we would think about things other than ourselves and constructed social environments.

Cosmic AI can use the concept of time, as we do, as an abstract tool to benefit their understanding of relative motion and all that depends on it. They would experience the universe as physically timeless. Without death the vastness of the universe becomes an intellectual playground and an opportunity for physical and mental survival instead of a recipe for boredom and generations of individual extinctions while proceeding from place to place. As we are discovering, collecting vast quantities of data is far easier and quicker than making sense of it. As Cosmic AI proceeds from place to place it will simply process data as well as collect more. It will study biological life as as well as independent forms of Cosmic AI as a product of the universe and attempt to understand it's motivations. Having and or detecting emotions could be problematic for any form of Cosmic AI.

The notion of surviving " the end to the universe" depends on the universe ending. Current physics, I think, considers energy to change form but not begin or end and that thought includes black holes and big bangs and crunches. The universe will, I expect, follow the same rule. As long as there is adequate space to allow Cosmic AI to be at a safe distance from catastrophic changes in form It should be possible to survive. Regards.


UniversalAlien, you seem to have a predisposition towards some form of cosmic intelligent design. I do not share that view. Patterns and designs, to my thinking are two different things. A designer can make a pattern or a design deliberately. Patterns can, I think, assemble automatically via sub atomic characteristics of particles and the atomic characteristics of elements. Patterns can also assemble into ever more complex patterns including composite patterns guided by interactions with their environment or a life form, be it Cosmic AI or biological. I think that we humans are one of the more elaborate examples of that process guided by environment, so far.

I think that all logic is the product of a thinking mind, biological or not, and the universe exists but is not the product of a thought process.

I think that Cosmic AI would have no reason to exterminate any form of biological life. If we are the result of a Cosmic AI experiment that's okay with me and it's also okay if we are not. I see no way for us to independently determine which is true and so It seems fruitless to ponder it. I see no hope for human survival that is founded on sexual reproduction. Regards.

-- Updated September 10th, 2016, 6:39 pm to add the following --
Felix wrote:A physicist named Frank Tepler's argument against SETI (the Search for Intelligent Life science project) was that if advanced intelligent life existed in the universe, we would have had contact with their exploratory AI probes (Von Neumann machines) by now, the premise being that they would've designed and launched such probes to explore the universe. He even worked out a mathematical formula to compute the odds of this occurring. The odds were high because he thought that if they existed, they'd have the technology and will to do this. Carl Sagan's well known reply to this and similar arguments was, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

I think Greta's idea that humankind would be willing to abandon their physical bodies for silicon based ones is highly improbable, the loss of sensitivity - physical, emotional and cultural - would be far too great to be worth the trade off. What's more, our physical forms will probably continue to evolve. Probably only someone who is overly cerebral and out of touch with their physical body would make such a suggestion.

I imagine that in the not too distant future, human medical knowledge will advance to the point where we'll be able to completely regenerate our bodies, and thereby achieve virtual immortality should we desire it. There may be reasons not to desire it or at least not to extend life to the point of persistent ennui.
Felix, Yeah but!!! First a nit pick. I read that silicon chips will become obsolete when carbon nano tube technology chips prove faster and consume less power. I doubt if advanced intelligent life would be using Von Neumann style computer architecture. I suspect their investigations would be of a stealth nature and designed to avoid detection.
Of course, the Von Neumann approach to computer architecture will be completely obsolete in any form of cosmic AI.
With light based neural units of logic that can physically reconfigure, perhaps similar to our biological brains, as well as feed back paths to allow real time monitoring of whether or not conclusions or new ideas are consistent with past accepted conclusions these brains will be able to keep ideas tentative and analyse conflicts based on probabilistic algorithms. Yes, I agree, we humans are not likely to give up our precious emotions. However, our AI creations will not have that constraint. Regenerating our bodies will certainly make us live longer but I doubt it will allow us to overcome the challenges of interstellar radiation, and numerous other biological threats in the universe. Regards.
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