Assignment Blog: Week 7

Imagine for a moment there is an intelligent being who one day got bored and decided to create something that wouldn't just lie there...it would move around, reproduce, evolve in totally unpredictable ways, becoming years down the road who knew what for it had infinite possibilities.

We'll call that being God and his creation Life.

Seriously though...Whitelaw's article about artificial life - isn't that essentially what we are trying to do? All life is creative in some way - reproducing, shaping its environment: that's what it is to be alive. But to make a creation that is not just a copy of ourselves that is capable of the same thing...well that makes us Gods.

Not that there's anything wrong with that :)

If we are to make a creation and truly want it to be a type of Life it has to be something that will be self evolving, unpredictable, with an unknown end. We, as its creators may be able to interfere in its development, but if it is not at least somewhat uncontrollable, then it is not really life.

Whitelaw refers to this type of unpredictable development as emergence. Traits and aspects emerge that were never planned and may in fact seem spontaneous.

Much of our own evolution did not occur slowly. A mutation can achieve what thousands of years do not. If it is a poor mutation, it generally dies out quickly, but if it is an advantageous one and can be replicated in the next generation, it will continue on evolving the species by these little evolutionary hops until the end result may even be completely foriegn from its origin.

Do we want to create life? Why not? As I theorized above, it seems to me that all life seeks to create something, adapt its environment, etc. We as humans are a particularly curious and interfering lot...why not want to make a form of new life?

And virtual life makes complete sense, really. We have to start with our own understanding of the world because there is not much else, but we can't just replicate ourselves as that is just as easily accomplished with a few minutes of biological coupling followed by 9 months of gestation. Instead to create new life it must be something separate and novel.

The virtual realm with its ability to both interact with us on a meaningful and understandable level and also its virtual alienness seems perfect.

Is creating new life possible? Quite possibly. We don't know we can't...we get closer all the time.

Is it a wise thing to do? Well, new life owes its creator for its existence whether it appreciates it or not. But it is quite possible new life could evolve into something dangerous and scary and incompatible with its maker.

The creation might turn against its creator; we are not invincible, though we are playing at being Gods. But if we were created, could we also kill our God? Some would say we already have...

Could our new life live side by side with us? Maybe...it seems possible. Can we live side by side with our God? Hmmm...well there's a religious question for you. But it's not something we can really be familiar with because most of us don't see God as controlling and interfering with everyday life. Regardless of religion, most of us believe our God has allowed us at least some degree of autonomy. So we might be able to do the same...culture our life but then remain removed from it, aloof.

Or...maybe, just maybe we could wander a brave new world together, remaining human, interacting with intelligent machines who in turn share our world as equals (rather than a separate world where we do not interfere) and have freedom to live in it with us.