When you define A.I. as living?

Question

Ok, this is a strange one.

To you what are the requisites of something living:

Say a computer program was able to learn and adapt, it would be advanced but not alive.

If it was then able to do that and make sponteneous decisions based on reason, would it then be alive?

If it could do all of the above, and question its existence, had will to protect itself, and felt compelled to reproduce, would it have to go further?

Were does "Life" begin, can it even be defined in terms of awareness?

Answer 1

I think therefore I am?

Answer 2

Nothing is living without a soul and no one can create a 'soul' no matter what. We humans have limits and the most intelligent of our inventions can never match that of our creator. Think of an empty jar. We can fill it with water, or oil or indeed anything we want. Each time it is filled up a level, it would be like humans coming up with new inventions, eventually it will be so full it will hold no more. The jar has a limit to how much it can hold. This is just like our limits, whatever we invent be it a super robot or computer. God allows us for so much and nothing more. This is what makes us humans His creation. The ability to invent something living is just not in the capability of humans. The 'soul' is what makes something a living being. Life begins when a soul enters the clot of blood in the womb and it ends when the soul leaves. That empty body can be used by human, preserve it, add more things mechanical or any wild thought you can imagine, it will never be a living thing.

On a slightly different note, Angels do not have the ability or capability to do anything but to obey God and do what he has assigned them to do. Thus they too are limited, but we are capable of more things because we have free will. Something Angels don't possess.

There is another type called jinn which Lucifer or Iblise belongs to. They have been given more powers and are capable of causing mischief and have infllence over us if we so wished.

Answer 3

I think that you have been watching too much Star Trek my friend, and I mean no insult. You seem to equate life with intelligence when quite clearly this is not a prerequisite. The one thing which all other animals, vegetables, fungi, molluscs, fish and anything else that I have failed to mention, germs etc. share, is a lack of self awareness. We are the only creatures who question our mortality and ask "Why are we here?".

In fact I will go further, "Intelligence is just a word created by man to make himself feel superior to other men and animals, no one would ever link the words intelligence and vegetation, in fact the word "Vegetable" implies a lack of any awareness to most people and if it can't play football then it ain't alive. - OK that bit was my little joke!.

In a world literally teeming with genuine bona-fide life forms why is it necessary to try to create machines other than to show how clever scientists are. If a piece of metal, silicon or rock crawls out of the ocean and evolves into something then that would probably be life. For the benefit of those with faith if god decides to breathe life into a bit of plastic then that too, for arguments sake, would probably be recognised as (a) a miracle, and (b) life. Anything man made I seriously doubt would ever be classified as "Alive" No matter how many numbers it could crunch. And, it would take an extraordinary machine to be able to regenerate tissue, which, even beyond intellect, is fundamental to life.

Answer 4

Life is internationally recognised as An organic set of molecules complex or individual characterised by the capacity to perform certain functional activities:

metabolism,
In metabolism some substances are broken down to yield energy for vital processes while other substances, necessary for existence, are synthesised.

growth,
Development from a lower or simpler to a higher or more complex form or An increase in size, number or strength.

Reproduction,
The sexual or asexual process by which organisms generate new individuals of the same kind.

responsiveness and adaptation.
alteration or adjustment in form or habits, often hereditary, by which an individual improves its condition in relationship to its environment.

As you can see self awareness is not a pre requisite of life, What you are talking about is conciseness deriving from intelligence which is not the same thing. now although a program may become self determining and hold reason, it has been created by us and will only have the characteristics given to it by the programmer or the evolution rules set into it's development. To give a program rights based on intelligence is flawed because you have inferred emotions, of which the program would have none unless we endowed it with them.
To anthropomorphise a construct just because you can reason with it would be a huge mistake.

Answer 5

Life builds upwards on microcosm. This is essential for life -- because the spirit of life is contained within the fundamental particles. There is a spiritual essence deep inside life -- and life has been built up this infinitesimal essence. So anything that is built upwards from rearranged matter that is larger than the very tiniest (infinitesimal) particles cannot be alive. It can be life (because everything is life) -- but it cannot be alive. The problem is that science is becoming able to manipulate the behaviour of already existing living matter. To mutate it and change it's development. This could give rise to new kinds of life forms, but it has not been truly created by humans because the infinitesimal structures had already evolved over billions of years.

So artificial life in the sense of artificial intelligence with self awareness cannot be created by the rearrangement of minuscule bits of matter. Because the spirit is already within the many times smaller infinitesimal particles which we cannot create. Life has to have been built upwards from these infinitesimal particles over billions of years. There is no ghost in the machine. The ghost is in the infinitesimal particles which are the bedrock of life.

Answer 6

Difficult question. An answerer said, that he is thinking, so he is. But if we consider the fact, that our brain is actually an organic super-computer, we fail this requirement. Because what is thinking? It is a massive stream of impulses in our brain, when our brain uses pieces of informations to conclude new ones. And really, our brain works as a computer, however not with chips and cards, but neurons.

But each end every living being must have one ultimate goal: to survive. This can mean the survival of the individual, the survival of the race, the survival of the knowledge we have gained over the centuries. If there would be a machine, that has the goal to survive, he would only be considered as a living being, if he has no limitation in reaching this goal. Because free will matters.

If a robot is able to rewrite its own base code freely, and this would allow him to do everything (and I mean everything) he wants in order to survive, even if he has to kill people, other robots or himself (sacrifice), ... if he is able to do this on his own, and discovers the need of this action on his own, he can be considered a living being.

A simple machine does not have the ability to doubt one's actions or anything, only if he is programmed to warn the user to use the recommended settings instead of the current ones. Only programming makes a machine live right now. If they will be able to learn, and improve their base code, like we humans do (since we have our base code, DNA, but we can improve and in some cases ignore it), this will be a significant advance.

Answer 7

It depends what you mean by alive? Does it have to be biological?

My computer is alive right now. A bacterium is alive yet many consider it to be a simple biological machine ... my computer can do much more than a bacterium.

I think what you're asking is human level intelligence/consciousness. Indeed one of the criteria for consciousness is "awareness" as defined by the Turing test. Then there's the "Chinese room" test to measure true understanding.

I read an article a couple of years back that says AI is comparable to a cat now. If cats have rights, should computers?

Interesting question. I had this debate on a forum I use very recently.

Answer 8

Link, my only concern is when intelligent business machines start using insurance company logic to determine that human life is getting in the way of greater profit margins. Once they know about the terminology regarding "acts of God" and the concept of "playing God" then no one will get the pay-outs for their extermination of human beings.

Otherwise, you might consider that there are many things we deem living that have no rights. In fact, we contribute to the killing of living things every day when we eat. If you are concerned about killing ANY life, then the Orkin man is mercenary mass murderer.

If you are really concerned about the point where life is defined, the check out the wikipedia link. Here is an outlne of some of the criteria:

1. Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, sweating to reduce temperature.
2. Organization: Being composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
3. Metabolism: Consumption of energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
4. Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of synthesis than catalysis. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. The particular species begins to multiply and expand as the evolution continues to flourish.
5. Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
6. Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey.
7. Reproduction: The ability to produce new organisms. Reproduction can be the division of one cell to form two new cells. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from at least two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.

An exception is viruses, which apparently don't fit all of these criteria, but I would argue that they do and that the food source is the very victim they infect, using cells within the host for "food" to reproduce.

You will notice that intelligence is not included in the definition as there are many things considered "alive" that are not intelligent.

Answer 9

Buddhists believe that every atom has life but their dress sensem is a bit dodgey.
Can you positively state that you are the same person yesterday as today.; Perhaps when you sleep your lifeforce floats off and jumps into the first body it finds when you wake up..
This implies that you are the memories of the body you are in at the time, making memory a hardwired function of your body...
I think I am therefore I think.

Answer 10

I am working on this problem with a friend. We have created a subroutine that would allow a computer to experience depression and to become "suicidal". The AI would kill itself (shut it self down and destroy all of its programming).

This requires the computer to have what we call "thoughts" and "feelings".

I think I could program a machine do exactly as you suggest. Naturally, if we program computers to be like us they will also behave like us. The AI may be monogamous, or maybe promiscuous. The AI may experience jealousy and fear and try to protect itself.

Answer 11

Life is The Soul... The Body but The Physical.